The refurbishment of Government Offices Great George Street (GOGGS) is at once a flagship case study of a successful private finance initiative (PFI)—a U.K. program put into effect to transfer the development risks for government projects from the public to the private sector—and also a high-quality renovation project that treats government property and employees with the same care as a developer would treat private sector owners or tenants.
When ING, a Hague-based real estate development firm, purchased a 0.64-hectare (1.6 ac.) parcel in the government/embassy district at the western end of the Malieveld, the city’s five-hectare (12 ac.) central park, it intended to build an office tower for a large corporate tenant. The prospective development was still a speculative project when the London office of Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) won an international design competition conducted by ING. Meanwhile, the Dutch Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur, en Wetenschap (OCW—Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science) was planning to move from a suburban location to the Hague, the country’s administrative capital, and it was looking for a suitable headquarters building. Thus ING found a tenant and the development of De Hoftoren became a turnkey operation.
Hangzhou, an important tourist destination in China, is 180 kilometers (112 mi.) southwest of Shanghai. It has served ancient emperors as a capital city and is still a cultural center. To the Chinese, Hangzhou’s West Lake is as familiar an icon as the Great Wall or the Forbidden City. Marco Polo visited Hangzhou in the late 13th century and called the city “beyond dispute the finest and the noblest in the world.” For the Chinese, a pilgrimage to Hangzhou is an essential life experience. Of the 30 million tourists who visit West Lake each year, 2 million are foreigners.
Among the commercial corridors radiating out from Washington, D.C., the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor is unique in being served along its entire length by a Metrorail line. The post-subway development that has occurred along this spine has sometimes leapfrogged from one commercial center to another, leaving a number of underutilized segments with intact nearby residential enclaves. The Market Common, Clarendon fills one such void with a mixed-use development providing stores and restaurants, office space, housing, public open space, and public parking.
UniverCity, located atop British Columbia’s Burnaby Mountain and adjacent to Simon Fraser University (SFU), one of Canada’s premier educational institutions, is a 65-hectare (161-ac) master-planned community expected to house more than 10,000 residents upon completion. A compact, mixed-use, transit-oriented community, UniverCity is founded on principles of environmental, economic, and social sustainability. Developed and owned by the SFU Community Trust, UniverCity transfers its revenue to the SFU endowment to fund research and education—creating a profitable model for universities with surplus land.
A city shattered during the 20th century by two world wars, Warsaw, over the last two decades, has too often been developed in an exploitative and incoherent manner. Miasteczko Wilanów, a new town for more than 20,000 residents approximately ten kilometers (6 mi) southeast of the city center, is a modern incarnation of the urban typology that Warsaw lost during the last century: a mixed-use, architecturally rich, pedestrian-oriented district. With a planned 240,500 square meters (2.6 million sf) of office, 68,000 square meters (732,000 sf) of retail, and 19,500 residential units underway, the new town has contributed to a rise in land value, from $50 per square meter ($4.65 per sf) to $470 per square meter ($43.66 per sf) as of 2010.
Recognized as an important seat of learning that brings together many different cultures, the American University in Cairo (AUC) has existed in downtown Cairo for 90 years. Increasing demand had strained the original campus facilities, so a new campus development (City for Learning) was commissioned while releasing a portion of the city center site for alternative use. The 105-hectare (260-ac) AUC New Cairo Campus is a visionary educational project that has catalyzed residential and commercial development in its immediate environment.
One of the world’s largest LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum public buildings, the California Academy of Sciences features an aquarium, planetarium, natural history museum, and four-story rainforest beneath a 2.5-acre (one-ha) living roof. Located in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, the building integrates the academy’s operations in a single sustainable structure, embodying the organization’s mission of preservation and protection of natural habitats, species, and resources. Designed by Pritzker Prize–winning architect Renzo Piano, the new development is one of the most important cultural improvement projects in San Francisco’s history.
The West Chelsea/High Line Plan, adopted in 2005, is a special zoning district that establishes an innovative regulatory framework for new and affordable housing and the preservation of a distinct neighborhood along a transformed elevated rail line connecting three neighborhoods: the historic Gansevoort Meat Market, the West Chelsea art district, and the newly planned Hudson Yards. The plan, centered around the restoration of the 1.5-mile (2.4-km) High Line as an elevated greenway, features a transfer of development rights (TDR) scheme that has spurred the development of over 1,000 residential units and nearly 2 million square feet (185,806 m2) of commercial space throughout a 30-block area.
Located in San Francisco’s South of Market (SOMA) neighborhood, Foundry Square offers a compelling example of a how a multiblock, mixed-use urban campus can go a long way toward enhancing urban vitality. One of the first developments to transform the urban fabric of the SOMA neighborhood, Foundry Square has been a game changer. It currently consists of four corner parcels, three structures (with a fourth in preconstruction planning), and a dynamic open space at the intersection of First Street and Howard Street. Upon completion, Foundry Square will include 1.6 million square feet (111,500 m2) of office and retail space spread across four mid-rise buildings. The thoughtful design of Foundry Square, from the pioneering incorporation of sustainable technologies to the large open space that activates the street, is what sets it apart from so many other mixed-use developments and makes it a vital contributor to SOMA’s revitalization.