Where and When is the project?

Some of the articles that I have been reading area about ways to repair what sprawl has done to the American cities. The options they propose to help counter act suburbia are; retrofitting existing development, infilling unused space in the suburbs (parking lots, unused residential yards, etc.) and the most dramatic of all being redevelopment. The combination of retrofitting and infilling spaces created by suburbia came to my interest, in particular some developments that have taken over abandoned city malls that have been turned into walkable communities that integrate: residences, shops, community spaces and a vibrant overall community compared to what we have with the suburbs.  

With the unsuccessful outcomes that a large majority of city malls have come to, it might be evident that Boise Town Mall will at some point reach the point where is no longer needed. The site for the project will be the commercial area of Boise’s mall and some of the surrounding retail stores. The site presents opportunities for a more vibrant development that could contribute more to the city’s functionality and beauty. It consists of large retail stores that once they go out of business or find a better place to establish, they will leave the spaces left behind with their vast parking lots.

City of Boise Limits and Site

Site

Though the Boise mall is still active, but with the circumstances and the results of sprawl in Boise, the project would take effect in a near future, in the next two or three years. I envision the project as being the start of the new era of Boise. It will be a potential project that creates a sense of community within what was a lost space left by sprawl. My plan with this project is to set example of the missed opportunity that we are letting go by with the type of development that we have been creating. 

Project Program?

As discussed in the past presentation about my project, I have been striving to clarify and narrow down the topic for my theses project. It has taking me a while to try to accomplish this; starting with a broad topic as urban sprawl, it has been difficult to decide what rout to take within this extensive topic. Choosing a designated location for the project has also been something that I have struggled with for the past weeks but I have finally stablished an ideal of the projects location. As mentioned in last week’s blog post, after giving a lot of thought, the location that I decided on for the project is Boise Idaho. It is a city that I know quite well and an area to which I have been part of for over a decade.

Boise is a city that has been greatly affected by urban sprawl and I have been part of that experience. Every time seeing Boise and the surrounding cities growing more and more to the outskirts of the city limits and covering extensive land. Creating more suburbs, each time making the residents of the area more dependent on unsustainable habits that make living in these conditions possible. The sprawl of the city has been taking place for over a decade according to my experience living there and it does not seem to change any time soon. No one seems to be doing anything to try to put a stop to the uncontrolled growth of the “city;” it seems as if the Boise residents like their suburbs and they enjoy living in an environment that is consuming incredible amounts of resources.

Taking this brief analysis about the city of Boise in consideration and their ideal of keeping their suburbs as part of their living environment, the only action that is left to do is try to make the existing suburbs better places to live. The problem caused by urban sprawl is to big already in this area and it is impossible to revert.  With this project, I will explore options of how to take the existing damage that has been done with the suburbs of the area (probably focusing in an area of the city in particular), and doing interventions to make the suburbs more efficient and creating communities that are self-sustainable and probably trying to densify them.

Over all, I think that the clients and the user needs for this project are still very general at this point of the project. Density is needed in the suburbs of Boise, having some type of mixed use developments integrated to the suburbs could potentially help densify these areas of the city. If I could find a way to integrate dense development to the suburbs it could be an asset in trying to counteract urban sprawl. When I say “dense development,” I am certainly not talking about taking high rise buildings to the suburbs; it would be more about integrating multi story developments (3-5 stories buildings) that concentrate in bringing mixed used building into the suburbs. Integrating mixed use to the suburbs would be the first move to try to make the suburbs better communities. Why? Because it would start to use the land in more than one form, it would be breaking the building patter from a single purpose building environment into a mixed use environment. As I said before, the needs for the clients and the users stays very general at this point, but I will concentrate on bringing architecture design that provides: housing, office, retail and community space to the suburbs. I think that by introducing this uses to the suburbs it would help activate the zones and maybe bring jobs to the residents. This way they could potentially rely less on the automobile for some of the residents and transform the suburbs into communities that connect better. It can result in creating smaller centers apart from the city that help support the suburbs.