INFRASTRUCTURES & URBANISMS Reclaiming rights-of-way for a new generation of cities Stone Pruitt Ray
INFRASTRUCTURES & URBANISMS Reclaiming rights-of-way for a new generation of cities Stone Pruitt Ray Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Architecture Degree Program.
Auburn University 5991, Thesis 2020 May 3, 2020 Instructor: Justin Miller
2020 | Bachelor of Architecture Thesis | STONE RAY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank each who supported me during my five years at Auburn University. Your encouragement was never unnoticed. To the faculty, staff and colleagues in the school of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture, I could have never imagined a better learning experience. And to the City of Auburn, thank you for an equally as influential learning experience, and your continued hard work at crafting a better future. Auburn’s best days are ahead of us. War Eagle.
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CONTENTS 01 RESEARCH ESSAY INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................8 EVOLUTIONARY REGIONS.......................................................................10 NEW URBAN PRECEDENTS......................................................................14 BETTER FUTURES......................................................................................18 BIBLIOGRAPHY...........................................................................................20
02 PROPOSAL, CITY OF AUBURN INTRODUCTION........................................................................................22 INFRASTRUCTURAL HISTORIES................................................................24 THE AUBURN TRANSECT..........................................................................26 AUBURN TODAY........................................................................................28 RIGHT-OF-WAY...........................................................................................30 THE REGION..............................................................................................34 THE SITE.....................................................................................................36 URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE.........................................................................42 THE MASTER PLAN...................................................................................46 DISTRICT ORGANIZATION.........................................................................48
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2020 | Bachelor of Architecture Thesis | STONE RAY
INTRODUCTION “Larger than life but part of it, infrastructure has an immediate presence; it shapes our environment and urban life in vital, authentic, and often messy ways”1
Weiss, Manfredi
1. Weiss, Manfredi, Evolutionary Infrastructures, 1
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American cities are showcased by their persistence towards failed ideas, but also in their magnificence — as places that are fantastically engineered with infrastructures, and development patterns, that have dramatically altered the built environment over centuries. Whether interstate highways or railroads, zoning ordinances or public school systems, each type of infrastructural investment has greatly influenced or shaped the types of private development patterns around them. In other words, different types of urbanisms have occurred over time — their patterns are often shaped by, and encourage, different types of supporting infrastructures. Put Differently, types of urban development patterns and certain types of infrastructure investments go hand in hand. For example, the investment in a peripheral freeway may result in the development of suburban subdivisions. However, the investment in public transportation may result in the development of urban housing and employment centers adjacent to each transit station. Developers, while austere as their motives may seem, are responsible for delivering almost all
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built product in the United States. Private, for-profit, development has shaped most aspects of the built environment, including the most cherished cities and neighborhoods. These real estate ventures have always delivered places of dwelling, working, shopping and gathering — or in other words, places that we need, and when we needed them. However, history proves that developer’s market-orientated approach to urban construction can be, and has been, economically motived to change by new and different types of public infrastructure. This can be best observed through the physical artifacts of certain types of built infrastructure, yet also clear in other types of policy based frameworks. Analyzing infrastructural histories in American cities will show an impressive repertoire of building achievements, and with it a wide range of development pattern shifts. Some of these achievements include sea ports that gave rise to some of America’s greatest cities, a transcontinental railroad system that connected an entire nation, and most recently a nationwide interstate highway system that allowed not just for potential military deployment, but for vast suburbanization across the United States after World War II.
Their rights-of-ways string together a timeline of urban fabrics that are perhaps due for re-imagination and reinvestment in an attempt at solving newfound problems of the 21st Century. One of the most important goals in reimagining infrastructural right-of-ways may be to promote more desirable contexts of places where people want to live. This idea is exemplified in the essay “Evolutionary Infrastructures” by Marion Weiss and Michael A. Manfredi: “Infrastructural systems are the enduring forms of urban evolution, multiplying as cities grow and requiring expanding swaths of territory to accommodate more and more mono-functional requirements. As the very momentum of exchange incrementally overwhelms out urban landscapes, we wonder what new forms of public nature might emerge if highways, communication rights-of-ways, flood resistant structures, railways, subway lines, and distribution grids were to become institutions of culture and recreation.”2
2. Weiss, Manfredi, Evolutionary Infrastructures, 1
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2020 | Bachelor of Architecture Thesis | STONE RAY
EVOLUTIONARY REGIONS “The region is the largest scale of civic art”
Andres Duany
3. Koolhaas, New Statesman Interview, 2012 4. Krier, The Architecture of Community. 107
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Dutch architect and planner Rem Koolhaas once said, “infrastructure is much more important than architecture”.3 Perhaps this alludes to the spacial implications of site planning brought forth by modern land use regulations and transportation infrastructures. Does a well designed architecture only have cultural or social impact if situated inside well designed infrastructure? The forces that have shaped urban landscapes over time have long been noticed by architects and urban designers, but it may be the case that the aspirations of some architects are somewhat unachievable if the physical or political infrastructure inadvertently fractures their ideals. Over time, urban infrastructures have evolved into large regions of public and private space. It is fair to say that it will take regional thinking to reimagine these infrastructures again. This thinking can be traced back to some sketches by European architect Leon Krier.4 Different types of infrastructures have resulted in layers of urban fabrics in American regions. Cities sought after exchange methods, and their urban forms accumulated or were constructed based on those economic needs.
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Water born cities thrived with early harbor and canal infrastructure. Later, railroads spread trade inland, and allowed new regions to grow. Freeway infrastructure allowed established cities to seeking new boundaries, and encouraged a depopulation of urban centers. Railroads are probably the most notable technology that influenced urban expansion in the United States. In 1802, President Thomas Jefferson said, “The introduction of so powerful an agent as steam to a carriage on wheels will make a great change in the situation of man.”5 Jefferson was not wrong. A new infrastructure in rail networks would single handedly transform a nation into urban centers whose citizens and goods could move more efficiently between. Cities in places previously thought uninhabitable because of the absence of ocean or river connections became possible, and places such as Atlanta, Birmingham and Charlotte began to compete in an open continent. These railroads forced new paths and rights-ofways through public and private domains, and they were welcomed as a revolutionary means of local and regional transportation. While heavy rail transformed the nations economic infrastructure for transporting
goods, local lines transformed urban contexts with the expansion of housing and commercial developments along key corridors. Developers built streetcar lines outward from downtowns, and cities began new growth patterns like that of stars along what were called the corridors and wedges.6 Post railroad era development largely took a suburban form in response to the boundless construction of interstate highways and regional freeways. This new suburban form along the infrastructure timeline was not only a higher engineered construction of roads more suitable for faster moving and more abundant automobiles, but the construction of great highway systems that aimed to connect all United State’s cities. The interstate system was perhaps one of the greatest infrastructural achievements in the history of the United States, and it received praise not unlike that which Jefferson offered to railroads. A century and a half after Jefferson’s statement, President Eisenhower at the 1954 State of The Union address said, “the vital interest of every citizen is a safe and adequate highway system.”7
5. Jefferson, Legends of America, 1
6. Duany, Plater-Zyberk, Alminana, The New Civic Art, 20 7. Eisenhower, State of The Union address, 1954
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2020 | Bachelor of Architecture Thesis | STONE RAY
The modern alternative to connect United State’s cities with personal automobiles was admirable and widely popular. Its timely construction and high usage influenced highway infrastructure to then become the infrastructural framework on how cities should expand their boundaries. Since highway infrastructure only supported automobile users, the private development models that followed it did the same. New highways brought new housing subdivisions, new shopping centers, new schools and new office parks, but since the highway infrastructure delivered only automobiles, the new development patterns also only accommodated those vehicles. Inadvertently, most American cities became largely dysfunctional for all but those who could drive — and the idea that infrastructure would be an integral part of an urban system perhaps was erased and instead conceived as a utilitarian artifact for motor vehicles. This evolution in infrastructure was all but a small part of the forces that created the story of American sub-urbanism. The post war phenomena that resulted in contexts that are dependent on automobile usage have started a number of design discussions on how to repair social discrepancies,
community disengagement and inadequate urban forms. However, the pragmatic view of how this new era of city design came into being in just fifty years post World War II falls directly in line with the history of infrastructure types. Early American urbanism wasn’t dissimilar to the traditional European villages from which their founders originated. Urban agglomerations of simple buildings and narrow streets defined the first new settlements along the east coast. After an industrial revolution of new technologies, infrastructure investment spurred the unprecedented frameworks that would change existing cities and also make possible the formation of mega-regions both inland and coastal. The pursuit to build these infrastructures has indeed created somewhat boundless cities. This is alluded to in an essay by Matthew Kiefer in the Harvard Design Magazine when he writes, “In our continual poignant quest to achieve a pastoral ideal based on privacy, economic security, and mobility, we have converted concentric borderlands into the thing they once bordered.”8
8. Kiefer, Suburbia and Its Discontents, 4
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2020 | Bachelor of Architecture Thesis | STONE RAY
NEW URBAN PRECEDENTS “…Each project is a catalyst both for local urban transformation and for a broader discussion about ‘public’ and ‘nature’ in a period when globalized urbanization, climate change, and planetary connectivity — with its paradoxical effects of social isolation — are all intertwined challenges.”
Barry Bergdoll
The push to construct new urban precedents for infrastructure types is already taking place in the United States, perhaps under market pressure as the desire to re-populate urban centers is higher now than it seemingly has ever been before. However, the ideas surrounding more people-centric types of urban infrastructure are not limited to large or progressive cities. The desire to construct alternatives to automobile-dependent growth patterns are becoming more apparent, and we can begin to see things differently in all types of communities. Particularly, when local infrastructural accommodations are intrinsically unique, sites and contextual conditions vary. It is important to realize that new models are almost always adaptations or re-imaginations of exiting ones. Again, in the essay “Evolutionary Infrastructures” by Marion Weiss and Michael A. Manfredi, they mention, “Our idea of an evolutionary infrastructure does not condemn the artifacts of infrastructure or depend on an idealized blank-state condition.”9 This is to say that some precedents and some new urban ideas are perhaps much less perfect than if started anew, but they are design solutions that deal with the problematic urban conditions that
9. Weiss, Manfredi, Evolutionary Infrastructures, 9
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exist in cities today. Leon Krier expressed this idea of urban infrastructure adaptation clearly in a 1975 project that demonstrates the re-working of a freeway interchange in Athens, Greece. The “return to urbanism” proposal attempts to reclaim unused space generated by the interchange into an opportunity to reconnect the city via a multi-level urban park.10 The design solutions by Krier in 1975 are not lost, yet but perhaps more conceivable in projects today. Each of these more contemporary examples include designs or ideas that re-imagine or replace existing models of infrastructure into catalytic models that spur better urban development outcomes. Alaskan Way Viaduct, Seattle, WA The City of Seattle recently demolished its “Alaskan Way Viaduct”, a doubled-decker urban freeway built in 1953 that connected south Seattle’s port districts to downtown and the Northern communities surrounding Lake Union. The freeway’s path cut past Seattle’s downtown by straddling the waterfront and disconnecting the city from the Puget
Sound and its numerous ferry terminals. The desire to repopulate the city’s waterfront with more humane urban uses accumulated in a project to bury the automobile route and replace the existing viaduct with a new at-grade urban boulevard. This new boulevard would help transform adjacent properties into new mixed-use urban development sites. The Underline, Miami, FL In 1984, The City of Miami opened a grade separated rail transit system servicing downtown Miami, and the neighborhoods south along US Highway 1. After continued highway expansion and suburbanization around Miami it was clear that the transit system perhaps was not effective enough in urban mobility and housing development as the dissimilar types of infrastructure. The rather famous city-wide zoning reform Miami undertook in 2009 was arguably an infrastructural act attempting to curb suburbanization. The zoning code, Miami21, reorganized city zoning documents into an urban transect, and aimed at allocating higher densities at transit stations as an attempt to encourage infill
10. Duany, Plater-Zyberk, Alminana, The New Civic Art, 109
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2020 | Bachelor of Architecture Thesis | STONE RAY
development and transit ridership.11 However, Miami21 spoke to this in so far as a zoning code could.12 Today an effort is underway to reclaim the unused land beneath the gradeseparated system into a linear urban park called “The Underline”. The idea of creating recreational infrastructure parallel to the transit system in-tandem with reformed zoning codes could motivate private development to arrive in better urban forms near Miami’s existing transit infrastructure. The Beltline, Atlanta, GA Atlanta, a city infamous for suburban development patterns, is becoming a precedent for new urban infrastructure with its “Beltline” corridor. The 1999 thesis project by Ryan Gravel13 strings together a number of abandoned bypass railroads that circle the city’s core into a multi-use path and light rail transit corridor. While only a small portion of the project is complete, an enormous amount of private investment into adjacent neighborhoods for new housing, commercial services, and entertainment uses has been shaped by the Beltline Infrastructure.
11. DPZ, Miami 21, The Transect. 12. Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Planning for Adaptation, Future of The American City, Harvard Graduate School of Design. 13. Gravel, Belt Line - Atlanta, Design of Infrastructure as a Reflection of Public Policy
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In other words, one could say that this oversized sidewalk has single handedly created a new destination for Atlantans, and that people from all walks of life are moving there because of this investment in publicly accessible pedestrian paths. Railroad Park, Birmingham, AL Not unlike Atlanta, the City of Birmingham came to be because of railroad infrastructure starting in the late 19th century. After many industries receded, the idea to transform an abandoned 19 acre downtown rail yard into an urban park brought interest back into downtown investment. Birmingham has previously invested in infrastructure aimed to compete with its southern suburbs, this included annexing land along US-280 to foster large shopping centers like “The Summit” in a hope to gain new tax revenues. Its inner city had fallen into decline and the downtown population outside of daytime jobs was rather sparse. However, the imaginative idea to invest in park infrastructure has created a plethora of new private investment near its edges.
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2020 | Bachelor of Architecture Thesis | STONE RAY
BETTER FUTURES It is important to cite the successes of many urban revitalization projects, but the common tie between these and others is an attitude toward infrastructure types and that their forms, in return, can create urban development patterns for worse or for better. In cities that are poised to keep gaining in population, and in those who are looking to attract new investments, different types of infrastructure ideas like the ones mentioned above can be catalysts for future urban development types in cities small and large, urban or suburban. This is part of an effort to create equitable and sustainable futures for new generations of people to enjoy. And perhaps 21st century architecture is more than building formations, but a medley of building, infrastructure, and landscape alterations.
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2020 | Bachelor of Architecture Thesis | STONE RAY
BIBLIOGRAPHY Manfredi, M. A., & Weiss, M. (2015). Public natures: evolutionary infrastructures. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Krier Léon, et al. The Architecture of Community. Island Press, 2009. Dunham-Jones, Ellen, and June Williamson. Retrofitting Suburbia. Wiley, 2008. Kiefer, Matthew j. “Suburbia and Its Discontents.” Harvard Design Magazine, On Planning, 2003. Gravel, Ryan. Where We Want to Live: Reclaiming Infrastructure for a New Generation of Cities. New York (N.Y.): St. Martins Press, 2016. Duany, Andres, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck. Suburban Nation the Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream. New York, NY: North Point, 2010
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Duany, Andres, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Robert Alminana, and Lejeune Jean-François. The New Civic Art: Elements of Town Planning. New York: Rizzoli, 2011. Shackle, S. (2012, May 16). The NS Interview: Rem Koolhaas, architect. Retrieved from https://www. newstatesman.com/culture/art-and-design/2012/05/ ns-interview-rem-koolhaas-architect. Weiser, Kathy. “Railroad Quotes.” Legends of America, Apr. 2017, https://www.legendsofamerica. com/rr-railroadquips/. Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Elizabeth. “Future of The American City.” Future of The American City, Harvard School of Design, 17 Oct. 2019. “Your City, Your Plan.” Miami21, http://www. miami21.org/zoning_code.asp.
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Gravel, Ryan. “Belt-Line Atlanta. Design of Infrastructure as a Reflection of Public Policy.” Georgia Institute of Technology, 1999, pp. 1–110.
Schned, Dan. Eleven U.S. Megaregions - America, 2050, http://www.america2050.org/2013/12/elevenus-megaregions.html.
Eisenhower, Dwight D. “State of The Union.” State of The Union. 1954, Washington DC. “Residents and Business Owners Discuss The Future of Black Business on Claiborne Avenue.” Big Easy Magazine, 4 Apr. 2019, https://www.bigeasymagazine. com/2019/04/01/residents-and-business-ownersdiscuss-the-future-of-business-on-claiborne-avenue/. Digital History, http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/maps/ maps.cfm. Kallergis, Katherine. “Underline Forums Aim at Public Input.” The Real Deal Miami, 17 Apr. 2015, https:// therealdeal.com/miami/2015/04/17/underline-forumsaim-at-public-input/.
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2020 | Bachelor of Architecture Thesis | STONE RAY
THE CITY OF AUBURN INTRODUCTION: A West Point Route passenger train arrives in downtown Auburn from Atlanta in 1952. The City of Auburn, AL was founded in 1839, and grew as an education centered town. The rail depot, first constructed in 1847, connected Auburn to the rest of the region, and helped fuel the growth of its central business district and university campus. For many decades, before passenger rail service to the city ceased, it can be argued that downtown Auburn was, at one time, a transit-oriented village.
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INFRASTRUCTURAL HISTORIES This timeline of events and milestones regarding infrastructure and development in Auburn shows an interesting pattern that is not dissimilar to most other American cities. The decades following the construction of interstate 85 in 1957 is particularly interesting. It shows a shift in ideas around urbanism in the city. It was not 20 years after the interstate’s construction that passenger service to the downtown depot ceased. Afterwords, different ideas about growth came into light, such as the construction of an outer loop road in 1971, one year after the last passenger train arrived in the city of Auburn.
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THE AUBURN TRANSECT 20 years of change. A series of aerial images along the Auburn transect from urban to rural display the vast degree of change that can occur in just two decades. Auburn’s downtown area has seen the construction of many new urban buildings of considerable density, but shaped by very large parking garages. The inner periphery of the city is almost completely new. An expanded airport runway, the rerouting of road rights-of-way and the construction of new ones in addition to new housing units and commercial development of a suburban pattern have covered most of the Auburn landscape.
Auburn Urban 2000 - 2020 26
INFRASTRUCTURES & URBANISMS | Proposal, City of Auburn
Auburn Suburban 2000-2020
Auburn Edge 2000-2020 27
2020 | Bachelor of Architecture Thesis | STONE RAY
AUBURN TODAY Today the City of Auburn is a robust university city home to nearly 70,000 people. It is projected to breach a population of 100,000 by the year 2040.
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2020 | Bachelor of Architecture Thesis | STONE RAY
RIGHT-OF-WAY “is a right to make a way over a piece of land, usually to and from another piece of land.” “is a type of easement granted or reserved over the land for transportation purposes, such as a highway, public footpath, rail transport or canal.”
The existing CSX right-of-way through the city of Auburn is an interesting artifact of infrastructure. While it currently only services one main line freight route for the CSX transportation corporation, the capacity of the right-of-way is not fully developed. Historical images show two main lines that used to exist and in many areas there is additional space beyond that. This diagram [right] shows the right-of-way boundaries through the city of Auburn. Its vertical scale is 1:1, showing how often the linear system changes in width and how there is available space to add additional track back into the space. It is possible to build a regional passenger line that is parallel to the existing freight line. Where a station may occur, the right-of-way can also handle additional spurs to access a platform on both the north and south sides.
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INFRASTRUCTURES & URBANISMS | Proposal, City of Auburn
Diagram of the CSX railroad right-of-way through the city of Auburn.
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2020 | Bachelor of Architecture Thesis | STONE RAY
THE REGION “The Region is the largest scale of civic art� Andres Duany
The drawings that organize the site and the role that new or re-imagined right-of-ways can have must be arranged from the largest to the smallest scale. The first set of drawings begins at the scale of the mega-region(s). In this case, the southeastern United States, its principle and noteworthy cities, and an envisioned network of high speed passenger rail connections. These start a dialogue about the larger urban impacts of examining and rethinking rail rightsof-way between cities. Certain bands, arcs and clusters of cities in this diagram become clear, as if constellations of stars. The opportunity for them to work together as a system is increasingly interesting. Anchored by Atlanta, New Orleans and Miami, the Piedmont Atlantic, Gulf coast and Southern Florida mega regions are the obvious benefactors. However, between the anchoring cities are other places that support this vision. [Next spread] Pieces of this vision are already in action, and one of the key tasks for this proposal is to find a system that belongs to the selected site in Auburn, AL.
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INFRASTRUCTURES & URBANISMS | Proposal, City of Auburn
Southeastern United States with envisioned passenger rail corridors connecting major cities and regions.
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2020 | Bachelor of Architecture Thesis | STONE RAY
Developing System: BRIGHTLINE by Virgin Trains USA is a privately developed high-speed rail project connecting cities in South Florida with future planned expansions in the region. 34
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Future Systems: The Piedmont Atlantic to Gulf Coast high-speed rail corridor is a proposal to connect Raleigh to New Orleans via Atlanta and [site] Auburn, Alabama. 35
2020 | Bachelor of Architecture Thesis | STONE RAY
THE SITE
The next set of drawings is at the scale of the local region. The city of Auburn and its neighboring city of Opelika in Lee County, Alabama.
[Below] List of the largest cities in Alabama based on 2019 US census bureau estimates.
The radial growth of the city seen in its stellate arrangement of existing and planned roads have encouraged the continued annexation of peripheral land and the development of automobile dependent suburban subdivisions. These developments are disconnected from any employment, commercial or community centers. The addition of a regional rail station and a parallel local rail line on the existing CSX rail right-of-way distributes land value onto a linear system at the metro area’s core. The city of Auburn’s estimated 2020 population is close to 67,000 people, making it the 8th largest city in Alabama. The metro population is much higher when including the neighboring city of Opelika and temporal populations related to university activities. The City proper is estimated to have a population over 100,000 by 2040.
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INFRASTRUCTURES & URBANISMS | Proposal, City of Auburn
Future Systems: Piedmont Atlantic to Gulf Coast high-speed rail corridor through the City of Auburn, AL and parallel local line connecting other nodes in the city. 37
2020 | Bachelor of Architecture Thesis | STONE RAY
The site selection focuses in on the context surrounding the downtown Auburn regional rail station and one local rail station that is still within the downtown urban district. 38
INFRASTRUCTURES & URBANISMS | Proposal, City of Auburn
The formal boundaries of the site and the boundaries of the adjacent Auburn University campus
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2020 | Bachelor of Architecture Thesis | STONE RAY
Existing aerial photograph of downtown Auburn with site boundary.
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Existing street grid of downtown Auburn with railroad right-of-way boundary.
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2020 | Bachelor of Architecture Thesis | STONE RAY
URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE In a series of plan diagrams, the site’s urban infrastructures are displayed. In order the enhance pedestrian accessibility, new streets are added and some existing streets are extended to make a more granular grid system. Pedestrian paths largely associated with Auburn University’s campus are extended into the city center to further this idea and provide a different layer of connectivity than only street right-of-ways. In addition, parks and open spaces are placed more widely throughout the site as anchors for some important sites and urban connections.
Existing and proposed street grid
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INFRASTRUCTURES & URBANISMS | Proposal, City of Auburn
Existing and proposed pedestrian grid
Existing and proposed parks and open spaces
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2020 | Bachelor of Architecture Thesis | STONE RAY
Existing figure-ground plan of Downtown Auburn.
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INFRASTRUCTURES & URBANISMS | Proposal, City of Auburn
Proposed figure-ground plan for Downtown Auburn Transit Shed.
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2020 | Bachelor of Architecture Thesis | STONE RAY
THE MASTER PLAN CITY OF AUBURN
The final drawing displays a new vision for the land between the proposed rail stations and Auburn University. Downtown Auburn is re-imagined as a first class transit-oriented node belonging not only to the people of Auburn as a robust city center, but also to a greater regional system of economic possibilities. An existing array of contributing buildings in the city’s historic core along with a range of new mixed-use developments built over the past 5 years provide a framework to build upon.
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INFRASTRUCTURES & URBANISMS | Proposal, City of Auburn
Proposed master plan for downtown Auburn, AL district between transit stations and Auburn University.
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2020 | Bachelor of Architecture Thesis | STONE RAY
DISTRICT ORGANIZATION CITY OF AUBURN
In order to envision certain land uses and building types inside the master plan, the site is organized into certain districts. These districts are similar to existing zoning lines, but follow a more marketable boundary based on the locations of the proposed rail stations and the existing urban context. The Urban Core offers a more diverse arrangement of building types. The proximity to the main rail station and campus entrance make this area most attractive for a hyper mix of uses such as hotels and offices related to university research and events. Urban Neighborhood West is largely residential buildings of a higher density because of its adjacency to the university and the main station. Urban Neighborhood East is also largely residential but of a lower density town or row-house type variety. It acts as a transition area to existing neighborhoods east of the city center.
Auburn University campus relative to the other districts in the master plan. 48
The North College Historic District is noted in the plan to explain decisions related to the northern boundary of the site. The historic district is protected by the state of Alabama and therefore is not envisioned to see any major changes.
INFRASTRUCTURES & URBANISMS | Proposal, City of Auburn
Proposed master plan for downtown Auburn, AL district between transit stations and Auburn University.
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2020 | Bachelor of Architecture Thesis | STONE RAY
Proposed regional and local rail lines and station locations.
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INFRASTRUCTURES & URBANISMS | Proposal, City of Auburn
Station locations related to historic depot location. The main station is placed at the terminus of Wright Street as to capture vistas to Samford Hall and The Auburn First Baptist Church. The local station is placed between Ross Street and the proposed Felton Little Park and Town Creek Greenway. 51
2020 | Bachelor of Architecture Thesis | STONE RAY
Diagram of major points of interest along pedestrian routes from the main station and local station.
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INFRASTRUCTURES & URBANISMS | Proposal, City of Auburn
Existing and proposed major parking facilities.
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2020 | Bachelor of Architecture Thesis | STONE RAY
Diagram of existing contributing buildings within the site boundary, including recently constructed mixed-use student housing properties. 54
INFRASTRUCTURES & URBANISMS | Proposal, City of Auburn
Diagram of existing contributing buildings within the site boundary including planned or proposed projects by private developers, Auburn University and The City of Auburn. 55
2020 | Bachelor of Architecture Thesis | STONE RAY
Lastly, the ideas displayed in the master plan are shown with two illustrative perspective drawings. From the air and from the ground the scale of buildings, public spaces and rail corridor can be seen working together in creating a new vision for the city.
Aerial perspective drawing of downtown Auburn adjacent to the rail corridor showing new public spaces and infill of noncontributing properties. 56
INFRASTRUCTURES & URBANISMS | Proposal, City of Auburn
Ground level view of the envisioned Auburn main station, plaza and urban redevelopment along W. Glenn Avenue. 57
2020 | Bachelor of Architecture Thesis | STONE RAY
Auburn’s best days are yet to come. Thank you.
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