Mueller is a 700-acre redevelopment of a former airport into a health-focused master-planned community just three miles from downtown Austin, Texas. By 2020, Mueller is projected to have over 5,700 single family and multifamily units, a quarter of which will be affordable for low-income families. The Catellus Development Corporation worked with master planners ROMA Design and McCann Adams Studio to promote community health and wellness, to increase pedestrian activity, to improve air quality, and to utilize low-emission building materials.
Mueller’s various facilities and amenities are designed around the principles of social interaction, open space preservation, and active lifestyles. Tree-lined sidewalks and protected bicycle lanes provide shade and connect to a comprehensive trail system, retail, and recreational parks to encourage walking and bicycling. To promote physical fitness, Mueller provides sports facilities, playgrounds, a stretching area, and outdoor showers. A six-acre orchard and community garden provides residents with a seasonal harvest. Residents have initiated over 40 different clubs and interest groups and over 70,000 people attend large scale community events annually. The developer has facilitated social interaction these interactions through a block party at move-in and through physical design, including front porches, stoops, gardens, and alleyways in residential areas.
Greenville, South Carolina, took an opportunity to dramatically enhance its downtown area by opening up and preserving its waterfalls, creating pedestrian-focused places in the heart of the central business district. Changes in the local economy and labor market resulted in downtown disinvestment in Greenville. Over the course of about 30 years, city and state governments worked with private businesses to create a new vision for downtown Greenville that would reestablish the city as an attractive place to be with a viable business center. Economic development and rising land values have allowed residents and workers to now use spaces that were once viewed as eyesores and unsafe.
Comprised of six buildings on 4.67 acres (1.89 ha) in downtown Charlotte, North Carolina, the Levine Center for the Arts brings a cultural center to a growing central business district. The mixed use project includes three museums, a theater, an auditorium, 1,558,000 square feet (144,743 m2) of office space in Duke Energy’s corporate headquarters, and 32,035 square feet (2,976 m2) of ground-level retail space. This development represents a significant investment in Charlotte’s central business district and its public cultural offerings.
The mixed-use Darling Quarter development in Sydney, Australia, is a 3.7 acre (1.5 ha) office/retail/entertainment center and tourist destination. This place-making project is located in Darling Harbour, which is one of Australia’s most-visited destinations, and it abuts Sydney’s central business district. It is centered around 69,965 square feet (6,500 m2) of open space and includes 32,292 square feet (3,000 m2) of retail space and 613,543 square feet (57,000 m2) of office space. Prior to this development by Lend Lease, the site had housed an unsuccessful entertainment center that was not well integrated into its urban and waterfront surroundings.
The 27-acre (10.9-ha) L.A. LIVE project has energized downtown Los Angeles by creating a dynamic new hub of activity where Angelenos and tourists can engage in a variety of entertainment opportunities. Located in the South Park area of downtown Los Angeles near the confluence of the 10 and the 110 freeways and in proximity to light rail, L.A. LIVE shines like a beacon and captivates the eye with its sleek, 54-story skyscraper and effervescent LED signage. Offering many options, this sports- and entertainment-oriented development’s 5 million square feet (464,500 m2) houses two hotels, upscale residences, the STAPLES Center multipurpose arena, the Nokia Theatre, and numerous restaurants, among other uses, and anchors a part of downtown that once sat neglected and forlorn.
THE ARC—an acronym for Town Hall Education Arts & Recreation Campus—is a $27 million, two-building, 110,000-square-foot (10,219 m2) multipurpose campus serving children and their families living in the Anacostia neighborhood, Washington, D.C.’s poorest ward. Located on a 16-acre (6 ha) site owned by the National Park Service and completed in February 2005, the campus was […]
Like many communities, the city of Sugar Land, Texas, uses available municipal financing tools to enable successful development. The Houston suburb has expanded its concept of successful planned development beyond just the revenue stream and the typical public-private partnership. Sugar Land’s town square in particular is a hugely successful result of creative financing and effective […]
In 1998, Mayor Richard Daley established a partnership with Chicago’s philanthropic community called the Millennium Park Foundation (MPF), a 501c3 not-for-profit corporation, and together they produced Millennium Park. Mayor Daley sliced through a red ribbon and officially opened the park on July 16, 2004. More than ten years later, the inventive park is a boon […]
The Haus für Musik and Musiktheater (MUMUTH; House of Music and Music Drama) is a multipurpose theater in the cultural center of Graz, Austria. Designed by the Amsterdam-based UNStudio, the gently bulging four-story structure is shrouded by a thin stainless-steel mesh and organized around a load-bearing spiral staircase. Developed by state-owned Bundesimmobiliengesellschaft and opened in March 2009, the 6,200-square-meter (67,000-sf) project features a 450-seat theater alongside a restaurant, rehearsal rooms, and workshops for 2,100 students.
Amsterdam’s city council had long dreamed of bringing the city center back to the waterfront of the IJ, a broad river dividing the city into two parts. Although the original city center had been located along the southern bank of the IJ, development in the early 20th century separated the city’s urban core from the water and, until recently, this area was an active harbor inaccessible to the public. After years of planning that began in the 1980s, the city is now redeveloping a long strip of land on the south side of the IJ with an urban master plan that calls for a mix of housing, offices, public buildings, and other civic related functions. The Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ (Music Hall on the IJ) is playing a fundamental role in this revitalization effort.
