High Point is a 129-acre (52 ha) mixed-income redevelopment project in Seattle focused on resident well-being and an enhanced quality of life in the surrounding area.
Health-promoting features at High Point include a community clinic, pedestrian-friendly design, and homes designed to reduce the risk and severity of asthma.
From 1929 through 1995, Stapleton International Airport served as Denver’s municipal airport. By 1987, plans were underway to build a new, state-of-the-art airport farther east, and they met voter approval in 1989. Meanwhile, a nonprofit group of civic and business leaders, working in partnership with the city of Denver, formed the Stapleton Development Foundation to determine the disposition of the soon-tobe-redundant Stapleton airport. In 1999, based on the foundation’s guidelines for development, the city selected Forest City Enterprises to be the master developer of the publicly owned site—located just five miles from downtown—which offered the largest urban redevelopment opportunity in Denver’s history. Today, the former airport is being reborn as a 4,700-acre (1,902 ha) master-planned community that, at buildout, will contain more than 12,000 homes, 13 million square feet (1.2 million m2) of commercial development, and more than 1,100 acres (445 ha) of parks and open space. Construction began in 2001, and the first phase, Stapleton District 1, was substantially complete in 2005. Encompassing 489 acres (198 ha), District 1 contains 2,100 residences—ranging from rental apartments to single-family homes, in many styles and price ranges—plus 200,000 square feet (18,580 m2) of office and industrial space, 120,000 square feet (11,148 m2) of retail space, more than 100 acres (40 ha) of parks and open space, and four schools. Reversing the traditional “retail follows rooftops” approach, Forest City built two retail centers in the project’s first year. Although the community is only 25 percent complete, District 1 already offers a mature, walkable, mixed-use community that is home to 4,500 residents.
The new Pueblo del Sol, containing 377 rental apartments and 93 for-sale attached houses, replaces a 685-unit public housing project, Aliso Village, that was built in 1942 and condemned in 1998. It was not so much that the buildings were structurally unsound, as that uncontrollable drug gangs made them unsafe. Located in predominantly Latino East Los Angeles, Aliso Village was part of Pico Aliso—the largest public housing complex west of the Mississippi and home to 11 active street gangs.
Two purposes—the social vision of the federal HOPE VI housing program and the livability principles of new urbanist design—are coming together in the High Point development. High Point, a 120-acre (49 ha) residential neighborhood with a mix of incomes, ethnicities, and household structures, invites social interaction and fosters community identity. It replaces a post–World War II public housing project of 716 units with an environmentally conscious community of 1,600 new housing units, 45 percent of which are affordable and low-income rentals being constructed by the housing authority, and 55 percent of which are for-sale market-rate units or rental housing for seniors being built by for-profit and nonprofit developers.
The Courtyards of Delray is an infill project containing 32 three-story townhouses on a 1.12-acre (0.45-hectare) site in downtown Delray Beach, Florida. The debut project for development firm New Urban Communities, the Courtyards was the first new residential construction in the downtown area in many years. The project’s design was intended to encourage neighborhood interaction within three interior courtyards, but is also open to the surrounding streets. It lies only half a block from the shops, entertainment, dining, and recreation offerings of Delray Beach’s Atlantic Avenue. The success of the Courtyards of Delray, as measured by rapid absorption rates and a design that has been widely emulated throughout south Florida, has helped New Urban Communities establish itself and build more, larger-scale projects.