Ellen Dunham-Jones: 改造市郊

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http://dotsub.com/view/71865645-a015-4441-80d2-88fe2ea494cd
Ellen Dunham-Jones: 改造市郊
在过去的五十年里 我们一直在建造市郊 并由此带来了没有预料到的结果 我会来谈一谈这其中的一些 我会列举一些非常有趣的例子 这些例子在我看来能给我们极大的力量 来乐观的期待 在未来五十年里市郊的改建将会成为 主要的设计和发展项目. 所以无论是重新发展废弃的大型购物中心 或是重建停用了的大集装箱似的商场 或是在旧的停车场的地方 重新建造湿地, 我认为关键是 数目不断增加的 腾空的或是表现不佳的 贯穿市郊的 零售场所 其实现在给了我们巨大的潜力来 接手这些最不太合理利用 的地方 并且把它们改造成 利用更合理的地方. 这一过程能让我们 把我们更新的认识 重新融入已经存在的社区 使这些社区有较大的提高 并且能在原有的地方重新进行基础建设 而不是继续不断的 砍伐树木， 在边缘地区侵占绿色地带．
这为什么重要呢？ 我想这其中有许多原因． 我来说几个，但不会很深入细节． 单单从气候变化的角度来说， 美国城市居民的平均二氧化碳排放量 大约是市郊居民水平的 三分之一， 主要是因为居住在市郊的居民开车更多 而且他们住在相对比较分离的建筑里 你有那么多的外表面 会有能量流失． 所以如果严格的从 气候变化的角度来看， 城市已经 相对＂绿色＂了． 有一个减少 温室气体排放的好机会 实际上是把市郊变得更 ＂城市化＂． 我们在市郊做的事， 实际上要求我们开两倍的路程． 这一点就增加了我们对 外国石油的依赖， 尽管能源的利用率是在提高的． 我们多开了这么多路程， 但技术上我们并没有提高这么多．
公共卫生是另一个 让我们考虑旧城改造的原因． CDC(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention疾病控制与预防中心)和其它机构的研究者们 逐渐更多的把市郊的 发展模式和久坐不动的生活习惯 联系在一起． 而久坐不动的生活习惯又一直与 相当让人警觉的 肥胖率的增加联系在一起， 这地图里就显示了这一点， 而且肥胖症也是心脏疾病 和糖尿病急剧增加的 一个诱发原因 这个问题已经发展到了，一个现在新出生的婴儿 将会有三分之一的可能 发展成为糖尿病． 这一比率也随着孩子们不再走路 去学校的比率一起 逐步升级． 原因同样也是我们发展模式的问题．
而且还有最后一个问题－－关于是否能负担得起的问题 我是说，照着汽油的价格 不断上涨的趋势，还有多少人 能负担得起在市郊生活呢？ 把市郊扩大到便宜的土地去， 在过去的五十年里－－ （插语）便宜的土地也基本耗尽了－－ 帮助了几代人 享受美国梦． 但越来越多的情况是， 住在市郊，开车开到我们能负担起的好环境居住的想法， 能帮我们省下的钱－－ 这也基本上是我们的范例－－ 这些能省钱的便利也基本都没有了， 如果你考虑到交通的开销的话． 举例来说，在亚特兰大， 大约有一半的有房的人 年收入在二万到五万美金之间． 他们要用去百分之29的收入 在房子上 并要用掉百分之32的收入 在交通上． 这是2005年的数字． 这是在汽油价格涨到每加仑4美元之前． 其实，我们中没有人 真的愿意来计算我们在交通上花的钱． 而且这个数字在 近期之内也不会减少．
不管你是不是喜欢市郊那种有很多树木又很隐私的地方， 又或者你讨厌市郊路边那种没什么灵魂的商业小店 总会有很多理由来说明改建是很重要的． 但它可行吗？ 我认为是的． June Williamson 和我一直在研究这个课题 有十年多的时间了． 我们找到了80多个 各式各样的项目． 但这都是根据市场的需求来的． 具体的推动市场的原因有： 第一条是有大的人口变动． 我们总是认为市郊是 一个特别以家庭为中心的地方． 但其实已经不是这样的了． 从2000年开始， 有三分之二的市郊家庭 已经不再有孩子了． 我们只是还没跟上现实的脚步． 这其中的原因有很大程度和 现在两大的人口群体占主要 势力有关． 二战后生育高峰期出生的人（1945到1952出生）已经退休， 这之后是一个间断， 二十世纪六七十年代出生的人，是人较少的一代． 他们还要孩子． 但之后出生的拥有互联网的这一代人 还没有到养育孩子的年龄． 他们是另一个人较多的一代．
所以结果是， 人口统计学家们预计 直到2025年， 百分之75到85的新的家庭 将不再有孩子． 并且市场调研和消费者调研 调查生育高峰期的出生的人和拥有互联网的一代人， 他们想要什么， 他们想住在什么样的地方， 告诉我们将有对更多的城市生活方式的很大需求 其实我们已经能在市郊里 观察到 这一点． 生育高峰期出生的一代想在合适的地方安度晚年， 拥有互联网的一代又想过 城市的生活方式， 但他们的工作依旧大多数在外面的市郊．
另一个巨大的变动是 那些不被充分利用的 沥青的表现。 我一直想，对一个独立的摇滚乐队 这会是一个很棒的名字． 但开发商一直用它来 指未充分利用的停车场． 市郊到处是这样的停车场． 当战后，人们第一次在 远离市中心的便宜的土地上 建市郊的时候， 只修建路面的停车场 是很乎道理的． 但这些地方已经成了孩子们 玩跳蛙游戏的地方， 而我们只知道再接着像更远的地方延伸． 现在这些地方（路面停车场） 已相对是中心的地带了． 只修路面停车场已经不再合适了． 这些土地远不止路面停车场这样的价值． 现在，合适的做法是回到从前的做法， 在这些地方向上建， 建几层的停车场． 所以我们该拿 荒废的商场， 荒废的园区公园怎么办呢？ 其实可以用来做很多事． 在一个较慢发展的经济条件下，就像我们这样 把不再利用的房子重新利用起来 是一种很普遍的策略．
这是一个在圣路易斯 不被利用的商场 被重新改建成了艺术空间． 它现在既是艺术工作室， 也是剧团和舞蹈表演队的排练场所． 它现在虽然不能吸收像以前一样多的 税收收入． 但它还在为它所在的社区服务． 它始终都亮着． 在我看来，它现在成为一个很好的机构． 其它被重新利用的商场， 有的改成了养老院 有的改成了大学， 还有各种办公场所． 我们还找到了许多 把废弃的"集装箱式"的商场 改建成为 各式各样的服务社区的机构， 比如许多的学校，教堂， 还有像这样的图书馆．
这原来是一个很小的杂货店，名叫＂Food Lion＂ 现在成了一个公共图书馆． 除此之外，我认为，还做了一个很漂亮的适应性的重新利用， 挖开原来的停车空间， 改建成生物湿地，以此来收集并清理雨水， 建了更多的人行道 来连接到附近的地区． 有人已经把 街边的一家商店 改建成了社区集会的场所． 这是一个小的L形状的购物中心 在凤凰城，亚利桑那州． 他们只是把这重新粉刷过，看上去更新一点， 弄成一个美食杂货店， 他们又把旧的邮局改造成了饭店． 千万别小看了美食的力量， 它能把一个地方彻底改变 变成大家都想去的地方． 这项工程做得如此成功，他们现在正在改造街对面的那些商店． 贴在附近的房地产广告里 很骄傲的说， ＂走路就能到勒格兰德＂(一个有名的酒店) 因为它给附近的地区 提供了社会学家们称之为的 ＂第三个地方．＂ 如果家是第一个地方， 工作单位是第二个地方 第三个地方就是你出去休闲 和社区的人打交道的地方． 尤其是当市郊已经不再 那么重视家庭的时候， 对于有家的人们， 确实是有一种需求 想要有一个＂第三个地方．＂
最戏剧性的重建 是在下一类里要谈到的， 是另一个策略，重新发展． 在繁荣时期，就有过几个 很戏剧化的重新发展的项目 那些原来的建筑 被推倒了．整个地区内相当多的地方 都进行了重新建造， 建造成了一种紧凑的，能走路从一个地方到另一个地方的市区环境． 这些地区有些在这一过程中升值了． 这是Mashpee公共用地， 我们找到的最老的翻新例子． 在过去的二十年里，这逐渐地在 停车场上 建起了城市的格局． 黑白照片显示的是 60年代简单的购物中心． 上面那张图 显示了它逐渐改变 成一个紧凑的结构， 和新英格兰村庄想接 并在新的计划里， 它被批准和 新的住宅区域联在一起 跨过干线 在另一边接着发展． 所以有时候，它是逐渐改变的． 有时候是一次性完成的．
这是另一个在停车场基础上进行填补的项目， 这是一个华盛顿特区外的办公停车场． 当华盛顿地区的地铁通到市郊 并在这个停车场附近设了一个站台后， 停车场的所有者决定在这 再建一个新的停车场 并在原来的地面停车场的地方 新建一个大街，几栋住宅 和公寓楼， 并同时保留了原来的办公大楼． 这是这里1940年时的样子． 那时这里只是一个小的农场 在一个叫作Hyattsville的村庄里． 到1980年，这里已经被分割成了 一边的大的购物商场 和另一边办公园区的花园． 之后又在缓冲区建了图书馆 并在最右边建了一座教堂． 现在，公共交通， 主要街道和新的建筑 都已经建好． 逐渐地，我想那些街区 很可能会延伸到重新开发的商场去． 关于重新发展在商场上面的 那些大量花园式公寓 的计划已经公布了． 公共交通系统是改建的一个主要推动力． 这是它看起来的样子． 你能隐约看见那些时髦的新式公寓 建在办公大楼的中间 还有公共空间和新的主要街道．
这是我最喜欢的一个项目，在Belmar(新泽西州的一个地方)． 我认为他们真的建了一个很吸引人的地方 并且全部用了绿色建筑． 楼顶上有大量的光电转换阵列 还有风力发电的涡轮． 这里原来是一个很大的商场 建在一个一百英亩的大街区里． 现在这里有 22个适宜步行的城市街区 和公共街道， 两个公共公园，八条公交线路 以及许多种不同的住宅样式． 所以它真的给了科罗拉多州的Lakewood 一个市中心 一个这个特殊的市郊从来没有的东西． 这是这个商场在它最繁华的时期． 人们在这商场里开舞会，他们都很喜欢这里． 这是1975年的样子 商场在里面． 到1995年，商场荒废了． 建筑还留在那． 我们发现这是个很普遍的现象． 百货商场是个多层建筑，他们都建得很好． 他们也很容易就能被重新利用． 但如果是一家店挨着一家店的格局... 就真得变成历史了．
所以，这里是计划中的样子． 这个项目，我认为和 周边的地区有很大联系． 它给1500户家庭提供了一种 更城市化的生活方式． 三分之二的工程已经完成了． 这是新的主要街道的样子． 它很成功． 它也推动了 丹佛十三家里的八家 地区性的商场 进行或者计划进行 重新改造． 但重要的是注意到所有这些重新改造 并不是 只让推土机来，把整个城市推倒． 其实不是这样的，这里是把小块的适宜步行的街区 建在那些 已经不再发挥功能的建筑上． 所以，它给了人们更多的选择． 但并不带走选择．
同时，只在建小规模的 步行街区也是不够的． 还需要一些更系统化的运输工具． 我们也需要重新改建走廊本身． 这是一个加州一个地方 重新改建的例子． 他们把商业小店 下面图里白色和黑色的地方， 然后把它改建成了一条大路 这条路变成了这个城里的主要街道． 而且把这一地区从一个 丑陋，不安全 不受欢迎的地方， 变成了一个漂亮， 吸引人，高贵的，好的地方． 我希望现在我们能看到了． 他们已经建了市政大厅，并且吸引了两家酒店． 我能想像漂亮的建筑沿着那建起来 并且不会砍伐一颗树木． 还有许多其它很好的东西． 但我更希望看到更多的走廊被改建．
把地区变得更致密拥挤 并不适用于每一个地方． 有时候重建绿色 也是真的更好的办法． 我们能学很多东西从成功的 土地储备项目里， 比如密歇根州Flint那里的项目． 还有生机勃勃的市郊改为农场的运动 类似于胜利的花园遇见了互联网． 但可能关于重建绿色的最重要的一个方面是 能有机会修复 当地的生态． 就像密西西比外围的例子里一样． 当商场停用以后, 这个城市把这里重新 恢复了以前的湿地, 并发展了湖边的房地产, 吸引了私人投资, 这是这个收入特别低的区域里 四十年里的头一桩投资. 所以他们不仅恢复了原来的生态环境, 并在同时促进了地区经济的发展. 这是另一个重回绿色的例子. 在强大的市场中,这样的方法也能适用. 这是在西雅图, 本来这里是一个商场的停车场, 挨着一个新的运输中转站. 这条波浪线 是一条小河边的路,现在这条小河是暴露在阳光下的. 这条小河以前曾被改成停车场下的水渠. 但把小河暴露出来 真的能改进河水的质量 并且对附近动物的栖息地有好处.
所以,我向你们展示了一些 第一代的改造工程. 以后的会是什么样呢? 我想对于以后的改造我们要面对三个挑战 第一个是从整个城市的角度 更系统的 规划改造过程. 我们要能够指出来 哪个地区应该重建绿色. 哪个区域应该重新发展? 还有在哪个地方我们应该鼓励人们重新去居住? 这里有一个大工程的 两幅图 他们要试图在亚特兰大实施的工程. 别人问我们的团队 亚特兰大一百年后会是什么样子. 我们选择试图不再用向外扩张的方法 有三个简单的改变----造价很高,但很简单. 第一条, 在一百年后, 公共交通要能到所有主要的 铁路和道路干道. 第二条,一百年后, 要有一千尺的缓冲带 在所有河流旁边. 这是略显得有点多,但水这一方面有些小问题. 在一百年后, 离得水太近的小区域 或者是离得公共交通太远的小区域都不能发展下去. 所以我们发明了生态生产运输方式 来把开发区的人 运送到公共交通的干道上 并且同时允许对那些原有的 进行食品和能源生产的小区域 进行重建绿色的改造.
第二个挑战是 提高重新改造过程中 那些建筑设计的质量. 我来用这幅"民主进行时"的图 作为结束. 这是发生在Silver Spring, 马里兰州的 一个游行.内容是关于Astroturf这个镇的 绿色问题. 现在,重新改造经常被指责为 就是人造的市中心 和瞬间发展的城市地区. 这也不是没有原因,比起Astroturf 镇的绿色, 是没有几个例子能比它更适合被称作"冒牌货"了. 我得说, 这些都是非常混杂的例子. 他们都是新的,但试图显得旧些. 他们有城市的景色, 但却有着市郊地区的停车率. 这里的人口组成 比一般的市郊地区更多元化, 但还没有到城市的程度. 而且他们是 公共地区, 却由私人企业进行管理. 就像表面上看到的一样 就像Astroturf这里 他们让我很为难. 所以,我很高兴 城市化有所作为. 这样的游行发生的事实 其实说明 这种街区,街道和公共空间里的各种设施的格局 虽然有一些妥协, 但仍是一个好的事物. 但我们得尽力把建筑建得更好.
最后一个挑战是对我们所有人的. 我想让你们加入到游行的队伍里 并且开始要求一个 更合理规划的市郊环境 更合理的地方. 但从文化角度看,, 我们习惯于认为市中心 应该是充满活力的,并且我们期待它这样. 但我们似乎有一种期待, 市郊地区应该永远保持"冷冻" 保持它从"诞生"起就有的 那种青涩的状态. 现在是时候让他们长大了. 所以我希望你们 都能来支持地区的改变, 支持把道路变窄, 改进基础设施 还有那些很快将要到你周边的改造工程.
谢谢.

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Ellen Dunham-Jones: Retrofitting suburbia
In the last 50 years, we've been building the suburbs with a lot of unintended consequences. And I'm going to talk about some of those consequences and just present a whole bunch of really interesting projects that I think give us tremendous reasons to be really optimistic that the big design and development project of the next 50 years is going to be retrofitting suburbia. So whether it's redeveloping dying malls or re-inhabiting dead big-box stores or reconstructing wetlands out of parking lots, I think the fact is, the growing number of empty and under-performing, especially, retail sites throughout suburbia gives us actually a tremendous opportunity to take our least-sustainable landscapes right now and convert them into more sustainable places. And in the process, what that allows us to do is to redirect a lot more of our growth back into existing communities that could use a boost, and have the infrastructure in place, instead of continuing to tear down trees and to tear up the green space out at the edges.

So why is this important? I think there are any number of reasons. And I'm just going to not get into detail, but mention a few. Just from the perspective of climate change, the average urban dweller in the U.S. has about one-third the carbon footprint of the average suburban dweller, mostly because suburbanites drive a lot more, and living in detached buildings, you have that much more exterior surface to leak energy out of. So strictly from a climate change perspective, the cities are already relatively green. The big opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is actually in urbanizing the suburbs. All that driving that we've been doing out in the suburbs, we have doubled the amount of miles we drive. It's increased our dependence on foreign oil despite the gains in fuel efficiency. We're just driving so much more, we haven't been able to keep up technologically.

Public health is another reason to consider retrofitting. Researchers at the CDC and other places have increasingly been linking suburban development patterns with sedentary lifestyles. And those have been linked then with the rather alarming growing rates of obesity, shown in these maps here, and that obesity has also been triggering great increases in heart disease and diabetes to the point where a child born today has a one-in-three chance of developing diabetes. And that rate has been escalating at the same rate as children not walking to school anymore, again, because of our development patterns.

And then there's finally -- there's the affordability question. I mean, how affordable is it to continue to live in suburbia with rising gas prices? Suburban expansion to cheap land, for the last 50 years -- you know the cheap land out on the edge -- has helped generations of families enjoy the American dream. But increasingly, the savings promised by drive-til-you-qualify affordability -- which is basically our model -- those savings are wiped out when you consider the transportation costs. For instance, here in Atlanta, about half of households make between 20,000 and 50,000 a year. And they are spending 29 percent of their income on housing and 32 percent on transportation. I mean, that's 2005 figures. That's before we got up to the four bucks a gallon. You know, none of us really tend to do the math on our transportation costs. And they're not going down any time soon.

Whether you love suburbia's leafy privacy or you hate its soulless commercial strips, there are reasons why it's important to retrofit. But is it practical? I think it is. June Williamson and I have been researching this topic for over a decade. And we've found over 80 varied projects. But that they're really all market driven. What's driving the market in particular -- number one is major demographic shifts. We all tend to think of suburbia as this very family-focused place. But that's really not the case anymore. Since 2000, already two-thirds of households in suburbia did not have kids in them. We just haven't caught up with the realities of this. The reasons for this have a lot to with the dominance of the two big demographic groups right now, the Baby Boomers retiring, and then there's a gap, Generation X, which is a small generation. They're still having kids. But Generation Y hasn't even started hitting child-rearing age. They're the other big generation.

So as a result of that, demographers predict that through 2025, 75 to 85 percent of new households will not have kids in them. And the market research, consumer research, asking the Boomers and Gen Y what it is they would like, what they would like to live in, tells us there is going to be a huge demand -- and we're already seeing it -- for more urban lifestyles within suburbia. That basically the Boomers want to be able to age in place, and Gen Y would like to live an urban lifestyle, but most of their jobs will continue to be out in suburbia.

The other big dynamic of change is the sheer performance of underperforming asphalt. Now I keep thinking this would be a great name for an indie rock band. But developers generally use it to refer to underused parking lots. And suburbia is full of them. When the postwar suburbs were first built out on the cheap land away from downtown, it made sense to just build surface parking lots. But those sites have now been leapfrogged and leapfrogged again, as we've just continued to sprawl. And they now have a relatively central location. It no longer make sense. That land is more valuable than just surface parking lots. It now makes sense to go back in, build a deck and build up on those sites. So what do you do with a dead mall, dead office park? It turns out, all sorts of things. In a slow economy like ours, re-inhabitation is one of the more popular strategies.

So this happens to be a dead mall in St. Louis that's been re-inhabited as art-space. It's now home to artist studios, theater groups, dance troupes. It's not pulling in as much tax revenue as it once was. But it's serving its community. It's keeping the lights on. It's becoming, I think, a really great institution. Other malls have been re-inhabited as nursing homes, as universities, and as all variety of office space. We also found a lot of examples of dead big box stores that have been converted into all sorts of community-serving uses as well -- lots of schools, lots of churches and lots of libraries like this one.

This was a little grocery store, a Food Lion grocery store that is now a public library. In addition to, I think, doing a beautiful adaptive reuse, they tore up some of the parking spaces, put in bioswales to collect and clean the runoff, put in a lot more sidewalks to connect to the neighborhoods. And they've made what was just a store along a commercial strip, into a community gathering space. This one is a little L-shaped strip shopping center in Phoenix, Arizona. Really all they did was they gave it a fresh coat of bright paint, a gourmet grocery, and they put up a restaurant in the old post office. Never underestimate the power of food to turn a place around and make it a destination. It's been so successful, they've now taken over the strip across the street. And the real estate ads in the neighborhood all very proudly proclaim, "Walking distance to Le Grande Orange," because it provided its neighborhood with what sociologists like to call "a third place." If home is the first place and work is the second place, the third place is where you go to hang out and build community. And especially as suburbia is becoming less centered on the family, the family households, there's a real hunger for more third places.

So the most dramatic retrofits are really those in the next category, the next strategy, redevelopment. Now, during the boom, there were several, really dramatic redevelopment projects where the original building was scraped to the ground and the whole site was rebuilt at significantly greater density, a sort of compact, walkable urban neighborhoods. But some of them have been much more incremental. This is Mashpee Commons, the oldest retrofit that we found. And it's just incrementally, over the last 20 years, built urbanism on top of its parking lots. So the black and white photo shows the simple 60's strip shopping center. And then the maps above that show its gradual transformation into a compact, mixed use New England village, and it has plans now that have been approved for it to connect to new residential neighborhoods across the arterials and over to the other side. So, you know, sometimes it's incremental. Sometimes it's all at once.

This is another infill project on the parking lots, this one of an office park outside of Washington D.C. When Metrorail expanded transit into the suburbs and opened a station nearby to this site, the owners decided to build a new parking deck and then insert on top of their surface lots a new Main Street, several apartments and condo buildings, while keeping the existing office buildings. Here is the site in 1940. It was just a little farm in the village of Hyattsville. By 1980 it had been subdivided into a big mall on one side and the office park on the other. And then some buffer sites for a library and a church to the far right. Today, the transit, the Main Street and the new housing have all been built. Eventually, I expect that the streets will probably extend through a redevelopment of the mall. Plans have already been announced for a lot of those garden apartments above the mall to be redeveloped. Transit is a big driver of retrofits. So here's what it looks like. You can sort of see the funky new condo buildings in-between the office buildings and the public space and the new Main Street.

This one is one of my favorites, Belmar. I think they really built an attractive place here and have just employed all green construction. There's massive P.V. arrays on the roofs as well as wind turbines. This was a very large mall on a hundred-acre superblock. It's now 22 walkable urban blocks with public streets, two public parks, eight bus lines and a range of housing types. And so it's really given Lakewood, Colorado the downtown that this particular suburb never had. Here was the mall in its heyday. They had their prom in the mall. They loved their mall. So here's the site in 1975 with the mall. By 1995, the mall has died. The department store has been kept. And we found this was true in many cases. The department stores are multistory; they're better built. They're easy to be re-adapted. But the one story stuff ... that's really history.

So here it is at projected build out. This project, I think, has great connectivity to the existing neighborhoods. It's providing 1,500 households with the option of a more urban lifestyle. It's about two-thirds built out right now. Here's what the new main street looks like. It's very successful. And it's helped to prompt -- eight of the 13 regional malls in Denver have now, or announced plans to, be retrofitted. But it's important to note that all of this retrofitting is not occurring -- just bulldozers are coming and just plowing down the whole city. No, it's pockets of walkability on the sites of under-performing properties. And so it's giving people more choices. But it's not taking away choices.

But it's also not really enough to just create pockets of walkability. You want to also try to get more systemic transformation. We need to also retrofit the corridors themselves. So this is one that has been retrofitted in California. They took the commercial strip shown on the black and white images below, and they built a boulevard that has become the Main Street for their town. And it transformed from being an ugly, unsafe, undesirable address, to becoming a beautiful, attractive, dignified sort of good address. I mean now we're hoping we start to see it -- They've already built city hall, attracted two hotels. I could imagine beautiful housing going up along there without tearing down another tree. So there's a lot of great things. But I'd love to see more corridors getting retrofitting.

But densification is not going to work everywhere. Sometimes re-greening is really the better answer. There's a lot to learn from successful landbanking programs in cities like Flint, Michigan. There's also a burgeoning suburban farming movement -- sort of victory gardens meets the internet. But perhaps one of the most important re-greening aspects is the opportunity to restore the local ecology, as in this example outside of Minneapolis. When the shopping center died, the city restored the site's original wetlands, creating lakefront property which then attracted private investment, the first private investment to this very low-income neighborhood in over 40 years. So they've managed to both restore the local ecology and the local economy at the same time. This is another re-greening example. It also makes sense in very strong markets. This one in Seattle is on the site of a mall parking lot adjacent to a new transit stop. And the wavy line is a path alongside a creek that has now been daylit. The creek had been culverted under the parking lot. But daylighting our creeks really improves their water quality and contributions to habitat.

So I've shown you some of the first generation of retrofits. What's next? I think we have three challenges for the future. The first is to plan retrofitting much more systemically at the metropolitan scale. We need to be able to target which areas really should be re-greened. Where should we be redeveloping? And where should we be encouraging re-inhabitation? These slides just show two images from a larger project that looked at trying to do that for Atlanta. I led a team that was asked to imagine Atlanta 100 years from now. And we chose to try to reverse sprawl through three simple moves -- expensive, but simple. One, in a hundred years, transit on all major rail and road corridors. Two, in a hundred years, thousand foot buffers on all stream corridors. It's a little extreme, but we've got a little water problem. In a hundred years, subdivisions that simply end up too close to water or too far from transit, won't be viable. And so we've created the eco-acre transfer to transfer development rights to the transit corridors and allow the re-greening of those former subdivisions for food and energy production.

So the second challenge is to improve the architectural design quality of the retrofits. And I close with this image of democracy in action. This is a protest that's happening on a retrofit in Silver Spring, Maryland on an Astroturf town green. Now, retrofits are often accused of being examples of faux downtowns and instant urbanism. And not without reason; you don't get much more phony than an Astroturf town green. I have to say, these are very hybrid places. They are new, but trying to look old. They have urban streetscapes, but suburban parking ratios. Their populations are more diverse than typical suburbia, but they're less diverse than cities. And they are public places, but that are managed by private companies. And just the surface appearance is -- like the Astroturf here -- they make me wince. So, you know, I mean I'm glad that the urbanism is doing its job. The fact that a protest is happening really does mean that the layout of the blocks, the streets and blocks, the putting in of public space, compromised as it may be, is still a really great thing. But we've got to get the architecture better.

The final challenge is for all of you. I want you to join the protest and start demanding more sustainable suburban places -- more sustainable places, period. But culturally, we tend to think that downtowns should be dynamic, and we expect that. But we seem to have an expectation that the suburbs should forever remain frozen in what ever adolescent form they were first given birth to. It's time to let them grow up. So I want you to all support the zoning changes, the road diets, the infrastructure improvements and the retrofits that are coming soon to a neighborhood near you.

Thank you.