The TENTH post in my "32 days of Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia" project! Case Study II.10: The Domain, Austin, TX, USA How do you retrofit a 300-acre corporate R&D campus into a second downtown for Austin? Bit by bit. The Domain, a developer-led project, has inserted chunks of walkable urbanism into a sprawling office park (started in 1967 with the IBM manufacturing plant for the #Selectric typewriter). The bits are anchored by familiar department stores but centered on well-designed pedestrian-oriented streets lined by loads of brand-name shops topped by loads more apartments. Bars and restaurants spill out into many of the popular public spaces. The developers have leveraged these urban interventions as an amenity to attract large-floorplate office tenants to renovated existing buildings and new taller ones, mostly on the existing, wider, faster, suburban streets. While detractors deride The Domain as "living in a mall," the strategy has been very successful at attracting the next generation of knowledge workers to approximately 10 million new square feet, twelve miles north of downtown. There is too much to explain about this case study in a single post — read the book chapter for a fuller story! Image: Narrow walkable “A” streets with fine-grain active frontages break up the auto-oriented superblocks and create walkable nodes. The pre-existing “B” streets remain fronted with parking lots and garages. Source: Authors. Primary credit for architectural and urban design on this complex multiphase project goes to Nelson Partners Lp, Gensler JHP Architecture / Urban Design, Design Workshop, Stantec, Baker-Aicklen & Associates, Inc. Primary developer: Endeavor Real Estate Group. #RetrofittingSuburbia #urbandesign #urbandevelopment #reinhabitation #redevelopment #regreening #CompeteforJobs #DisruptAutomobileDependence ULI Australia Suburban Futures Ellen Dunham-Jones Mike Day of Hatch
Geoff Wilkinson
8mo
Great case study diagram, will look this up for more intel. Interesting approach to segment the streets in that way
Professor at The City College of New York
8moThe book!