Suburban Retrofit

North America Rethinks Its Strip Malls

As the strip malls ubiquitous across the suburbs of the United States and Canada lose favor and become increasingly derelict, planners and developers debate whether there is anything about the 'retail relics' worth salvaging.
1 February 2012 - 12:00pm
France 24

LA Artist Reopens Derelict JC Penney As Art Complex

An LA based artist is about reopen a 100,000 square foot disused JC Penney as an arts complex in West Houston. The former West Oaks Mall anchor had been vacant for two years before becoming the focus of the new rehab concept.
13 December 2011 - 6:00am
Swamplot.com

Maryland Mall to Be Transformed into a Town of its Own

North Bethesda's White Flint Mall is your standard 850,000 sq. ft. mall surrounded by parking structures. The developer has announced it will be replacing the whole thing with a 5 million sq. ft. collection of apartments, offices and shops.
30 November 2011 - 12:00pm
The Gazette (Maryland)

How to Retrofit a Cul-de-Sac

Eric Brown of Brown Design Studio proposes some solutions for retrofitting cul-de-sacs to reconnect them with the urban grid.
31 October 2011 - 6:00am
New Urbanism Blog

Overlaying Form-Based Zoning

Columbus, Ohio has been experimenting with zoning overlays, which do not change the underlying land use regulations but add a set of form-based regulations focused on livability.
9 March 2011 - 7:00am
Columbus Dispatch

Should Retrofitting Our Suburbs Take Center Stage?

In this opinion piece from The Huffington Post, Alex Becker argues that retrofitting suburban landscapes with denser development trumps all other sustainability agendas as the single most important path to a more sustainable future.
7 December 2010 - 2:00pm
The Huffington Post

The Most Dangerous Road in Georgia

Blueprint America reports from suburban Atlanta, where getting to the other side of the road is nothing to take for granted.
28 July 2010 - 12:00pm
PBS - Blueprint America

Giant Tripod Towers Terrorize Suburbs

When Dwell Magazine asked for submissions to their Re-Burbia contest reimagining the suburbs, they probably didn't count on a 3000 ft. geothermal tower on legs that rips homes out of the ground and files them into its towering heights.
13 August 2009 - 7:00am
Dwell

New Jersey: It’s Like Ohio, But Even More So

Sun, 02/01/2009 - 08:02

The second semester in planning school at Penn is defined by a major project in which students are broken into groups, given a problem region, and tasked with, in the space of three months, coming up with a plan comparable to what professionals do in 12 to 18 months. Over those three months, the students get intimate with their designated locale, exploring every nook, cranny and underused land parcel.

Helloooooooooo, Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

There’s an old John Gorka song called “I’m From New Jersey.” It goes, “I’m from New Jersey/ It’s like Ohio/ But even more so/ Imagine that.” I’d bet good green cash he was driving down Route 70 when he wrote that.

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