My Built Environment: Good, Bad, and Really Ugly

As recently reported in the Los Angeles Times, a bank that took over a failed housing development in Victorville, CA has decided it will be cheaper to demolish the unfinished project, rather than finish it and sell the units. Granted, things are no where near this bad here in Colorado, but I still find this story rather wild. Of the 16 homes in the development, 8 were under construction in some fashion, while 4 were finished model homes. All have been torn down. In Victorville, home values are about 50% off from where they were when this project was started.

Fortunately, the on site crews have been selling off a lot of the materials, and are recycling a lot of the rest, so at least it isn’t going into the landfill. But this entire exercise is still a waste of resources from building the homes in the first place, to tearing them down. Not to mention all the money spent on this project for building and ultimately demolition, taking the project back to dirt.

It just frustrates me to no end when I need to tackle a 5 minute task, but it takes an hour and a half or so to solve a computer issue, so I can get to that 5 minute task.

Okay, I will admit, this is not fugly, just plain dumb. It also isn’t often I give a fugly award to a project that I just gave high accolades too (see previous post). But as part of the Seventh Street reconstruction project, the planners decided to add diaganol parking, that you have to BACK INTO! I can only imagine the fender benders that are going to occur with someone stopping in traffic, starting to back up into the parking spot, only to have the person behind them not notice and running into them. This parking situation has had such an outcry against it, that the planners have decided to never do it again. Don’t get me wrong, I think diagonal parking is a great idea, and should be encouraged on more streets, but done the traditional way with pulling in forwards, and then backing out. A lot less dangerous in my opinion.

Recently, Grand Junction, Colorado has been spending a lot of time and money rebuilding its external downtown streets, and generally doing an excellent job. Basically, they are continuing the successful reworking of Main Street that was completed in the early 1960’s and was nationally acclaimed. This is also one of the first downtown streetscapes that I have seen that constructed a round-a-bout in an existing downtown intersection, and done very successfully.

Also included with this reconstruction was a lot of attention paid to the pedestrian environment. Sidewalks were widened, outdoor dining areas created, pedestrian scale lighting, and enhanced crosswalks. Low brick walls have also been incorporated to provide additional seating, and to separate pedestrians from street traffic.

The particular project these photos are from is 7th Street. This involved a reconstruction of approximately six blocks of a four lane street. Since then, they have also reconstructed five blocks of Colorado Avenue in a similar fashion.

On both of these, the City of Grand Junction has done a fabulous job, and this will serve as a model for other cities to look to as they rebuild their downtown streets. Downtown Grand Junction also has a lot of land that is begging to be redeveloped. If you know of anyone who would be interested in a long term investment, let me know!

I have done some research into the redevelopment efforts of Detroit. There is a lot going on in the works to redevelop downtown, which is starting to filter into outlying neighborhoods. There have been millions of dollars spent over the last decade redeveloping downtown, and the riverfront district. This includes new corporate headquarters for Quicken Loans, loft projects, and new retail and businesses. This has begun to spill over into other adjacent neighborhoods. Midtown in particular is seeing a renessaince with several new single family and townhome communities being built. What is more, most of it is being done using the existing infrastructure and street networks, which is important. The new buildings and neighborhoods are being incorporated into the existing neighborhoods. ModelD has a wealth of information on what is going on in Detroit. There are also organizations that are working with residents to create urban gardens, becoming somewhat sustainable.

Of course, a lot of this was going on prior to the economic collapse of late 2008, and in particular the auto industry which Detroit is heavily reliant on. And all is not rosy either. There are debates going on about whether abandoned buildings should be razed as noted in the article, Cleaning Detroit up, don’t demolish its gems. There are also claims of corruption within city politics, and a government culture of getting in the way and heavy bureaucracy, and the high crime rate.

This is encouraging for Detroit, but the downsizing of the automobile companies is sure to have a profound impact on Detroit, and will likely derail any initiative to redevelop that was going on, particularly with the collapse of real estate prices. On the other hand, cheap real estate might encourage people to move to Detroit. These are people who arn’t reliant on a local company for employment. Of course, the same can be said for many communities.

While I haven’t had an interest in visiting Detroit in the past, I do now, to satisfy my own curiosity.