Executive Summary HopeWorks Station North is a net zero–ready development at which affordable housing, workforce development, and job training combine with innovative sustainability elements to improve the life of residents and help the planet. Owned by HopeWorks and Housing Hope, the mixed-use retail and multifamily housing development provides comprehensive housing, social services, and job reentry […]
Summary of Wyandanch Village Wyandanch Village is a 40-acre, community-led redevelopment project designed as a comprehensive, “smart growth” transit-oriented development (TOD) located in the hamlet of Wyandanch, a historically underserved community within the town of Babylon, in New York’s Suffolk County, located on Long Island. This comprehensive, multiphase, mixed-use, mixed-income project was made possible by […]
Located in Scottsdale, Arizona, the 76,000-square-foot (7,061-m2) Chaparral Water Treatment Facility was built to meet the current and future water demand of this desert city and Phoenix suburb. Through the use of cutting-edge technology, the facility fulfills its public mandate on a minimal footprint and lessens its impact on the neighboring community with art and sculpture that pay homage to desert life. Completed in June 2006, the result transforms a necessary community resource—typically relegated to industrial areas—into a backdrop for the bustling Chaparral Park.
Located in the heart of Napa Valley’s Carneros wine-growing region and surrounded on three sides by active vineyards, Carneros Inn is a 27-acre (11-ha) resort featuring 85 individual guest cottages, 24 vacation homes, restaurants, and ample meeting and event space. The second phase includes Carneros Town Square, which will consist of a post office and a food and wine market that will open the inn to the surrounding area. The first resort constructed in Napa County in over 20 years, Carneros Inn is the product of a decade-long planning initiative with the local government and residents of the agricultural community.
Located in Salford, an outer suburb of Manchester, Chimney Pot Park is a radical redevelopment of 349 residential units in a troubled terrace-house neighborhood. For years, the community suffered from low demand and declining value, and was plagued by crime and antisocial behavior, absentee landlords and irresponsible tenants, and open back alleys that encouraged neglect and vandalism. With the original housing stock slated for demolition, Urban Splash—a development company renowned for regenerating distressed or problematic sites—drastically reconfigured the internal design and layout of the homes while retaining the original façades and street pattern.
Bridgeland is an 11,400-acre master-planned community northwest of Houston, Texas, which will be home to 65,000 residents when complete in 2037. Like the Woodlands, its predecessor, the Bridgeland site plan centers on scenic lakes that improve water quality, irrigate during droughts, and draw residents to common areas for recreation. These lakes form a stormwater system that exceeds local design requirements, and which has managed storm events much larger than those anticipated.
In just a dozen years, Daniel Island, a 4,000-acre (1,619 ha) site at the northern end of Charleston Harbor has been transformed from a private hunting retreat to a master-planned community. In the process, it has become an important center for the region and a national model for smart growth.
At the project’s inception in 1995, the region’s newly opened I-526 beltway passed through Daniel Island, presenting a unique suburban infill opportunity that would enable the city to grow without contributing to sprawl. On its way to becoming a small town—the community is 50 percent complete as of early 2007—Daniel Island already has nearly 2,000 residences and a town center with shops, restaurants, and other conveniences; extensive recreation amenities; and many businesses, schools, churches, and two professional sports facilities. At buildout in 2015, the community is expected to contain approximately 6,000 residences and 3 million square feet (278,709 m2) of commercial space.
A scenic, view-oriented, environmentally responsible community that strikes a careful balance between preserving natural resources and providing much-needed housing, Ladera Ranch, which was begun in 1998 and substantially completed in 2006, is a 4,000-acre (1,619 ha) master-planned community carved out of southern California’s vast Rancho Mission Viejo. More than 1,600 acres (648 ha) of sensitive habitat are being preserved as open space under a perpetual land trust, leaving about 2,400 acres (971 ha) to be developed with 8,100 homes and 1 million square feet (92,900 m2) of commercial space in six villages and three multiuse districts, with a relatively high average density—for production housing on a greenfield site—of 7.1 units per acre (17.5/ha). A central biofiltration system collects and naturally treats low-flow stormwater runoff, while a centralized computer system tightly controls irrigation, reducing water use. The community’s final two villages, Terramor and Covenant Hills, have incorporated a wide range of pioneering green building techniques, making Ladera Ranch one of the largest concentrations of green -designed and -constructed homes in the United States and the nation’s largest solar community.
The Ecovillage at Currumbin is an innovative 110-hectare (272 ac), 144-unit residential community that showcases best practices in ecologically sustainable residential development. Conceived and implemented with minimal resources by a small group of individuals who wished to inspire improved practices in land development, the project is being developed on degraded farmland on the exurban fringe of Gold Coast City, a major resort city on Queensland’s Pacific Ocean coast. The project site is seven minutes from the shore. The developer, Landmatters Currumbin Valley Property Ltd., has rehabilitated the site and is protecting its environmental integrity and biodiversity by preserving 50 percent of it as an environmental reserve, netting 80 percent of the property as open space.
When Hurricane Paulina swept inland in October 1997, one of the hardest-hit locales was Acapulco. The all-important tourism industry was devastated for about two weeks, while the suffering experienced by the people who serviced that industry—people who lived inland in makeshift squatter housing built on hillsides, riversides, and other marginal land—lasted for months thereafter. Landslides, floods, and 290-kilometer-per-hour (180 mph) winds left 400,000 people homeless and 400 dead in Acapulco alone.