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Old Posted Nov 21, 2014, 5:35 AM
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What kind of infill is your city seeing these days?

Building boom for small spaces in Asheville


Nov 21, 2014

BY JOEL BURGESS

Read More: http://www.citizen-times.com/story/n...ille/70032736/

Quote:
ASHEVILLE – How about a sprawling, single-story suburban ranch house with an expansive lawn? Nope. Not what you're going to find being built around the city these days.

Instead, try a home like Joe and Julie Anderson's.

"It's the equivalent of seven stories from the lowest point to the roof," said Joe Anderson, standing inside his tower-like home on Riverview Drive. With a relatively small footprint, but multiple stories, the Andersons' home typifies the construction that is currently making the biggest mark in Asheville.
---

So... Urban living is in! It's the hip, with it, now trend nowadays, and this article discusses what that means for a city with extremely varied terrain. In a nutshell, we're now seeing houses shoehorned in on just about every free scrap of land remaining inside the city limits. To make them fit, builders are having to get very creative.

As the article notes:

Quote:
That's particularly remarkable considering the city's steep terrain. The swoops, hills and even cliffs of Asheville caused builders decades ago to give up on some lots. But now, a new generation is circling back around, said Alan Glines, interim city planning director .

"The easy lots have been developed and now people are looking harder," Glines said.
What does the rush back to the city mean for your city? I know that in some, it's led to the unfortunate "teardown" trend in which rich people move in, level the kinds of soulful neighborhoods that drew them in in the first place, and replace the smaller houses with tasteless McMansion dreck. We haven't seen that here... yet... although the article does note that a neighborhood of "older and unusual single-story round-style homes" on the north side was removed to make way for tall homes on the same footprints. I also know that in Raleigh, the trend has led to friction between residents of an historic district who got upset when a contemporary house was plopped down among the Victorians.

All of this makes me curious. What kind of infill are you seeing? Do you think it's being done well? So far, it is here and I hope that particular trend continues.
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Old Posted Nov 21, 2014, 6:19 AM
mhays mhays is offline
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Seattle has been seeing major waves of infill for decades. The 60s and 70s were busy, then in the 80s infill overtook reductions in housing size to get the population moving north again. Since the early 80s we're in our fifth major boom. The current one is bigger than any before, with consistently more than 100 units per square mile underway at any given time, for probably a couple years at that level.

Most of the high-growth areas require little or no parking. Developers are taking advantage of that. A site that once might have had 20 units, say on a common 60x120' lot, will sometimes have 60 units, and do 20 parking spaces or maybe none at all.

Downtown is surrounded by some areas zoned to allow 440' residential buildings. Five are underway now, two more are in site prep, and many others are proposed. These tend to be 350-400 units, on sites of 14,400 to 21,600 square feet, or 1/3 to 1/2 acre. On 1/3 acre anything more than maybe 250 parking spaces gets very tough, particularly since all but three partial levels needs to be below-grade, so it's only possible with a moderate parking ratio. But the result is truly urban, unlike a lot of "urban" highrises built these days.

We're still mostly houses by land area. Apartments and even townhouses are only allowed in very limited zones that are maybe 15% of the city. But those areas have added tens of thousands of units since the mid-90s alone.

The result is that while Seattle is still below 8,000 per square mile, that 15% is often at least a few multiples of that density.
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Old Posted Nov 21, 2014, 6:29 AM
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Really boring shit like this:





Meh.
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Old Posted Nov 21, 2014, 6:49 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mhays View Post
Seattle has been seeing major waves of infill for decades. The 60s and 70s were busy, then in the 80s infill overtook reductions in housing size to get the population moving north again. Since the early 80s we're in our fifth major boom. The current one is bigger than any before, with consistently more than 100 units per square mile underway at any given time, for probably a couple years at that level.
This doesn't surprise me, considering that Seattle had the one-two punch of being extremely attractive (complete with the "cool cachet" of the 90's) combined with a very unique landscape that constrains sprawl.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Comrade View Post
Really boring shit like this:
When it comes to "multifamily" housing like that, that's pretty much the only thing that's getting built anywhere outside of the biggest cities, I think. There are two urban apartment complexes that look like that going in here plus two hotels that look like that (plus one completed hotel that looks like that), all downtown, plus five interchangeable suburban "garden-style" apartment complexes. One of those is being built on a hill overlooking downtown and the other four are going up in the suburbs.
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Old Posted Nov 21, 2014, 8:11 AM
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I think the City of Houston is getting an equal amount of multi-family and single-family infill. Although the multi-family development is being centered almost entirely in the Inner 610 Loop.
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Old Posted Nov 21, 2014, 9:41 AM
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Los Angeles is getting a number of 4-7 story woodframe apartment and condo complexes, primarily in Downtown, Hollywood/West Hollywood, Koreatown, Santa Monica/Venice, Glendale, and Culver City. The buildings can and do run the entire design spectrum, but a disporportionate amount tend to be of the bland, uninspired variety from this firm: http://tca-arch.com/portfolio/. By contrast, LA's contemporary SFH architecture is among the most cutting edge and avant garde anywhere, which makes sense, given LA's history of progressive mid-century design.

Oslo is both large-scale redevelopment and traditional infill. On one hand, you have residential buildings go up on small lots in 1880s-1900s neighborhoods, but most of the new units added are redevelopments of train tracks, harbor frontage, auto-centric districts not far from downtown, etc. The most ambitious of these is Barcode, essentially the construction of a La Defense-style CBD next to the main train station. In comparison to most cities elsewhere, contemporary architecture and design in Oslo is generally of a very high level and quality.

P1470048 by KingoftheHill., on Flickr

P1460557 by KingoftheHill., on Flickr

P1460714 by KingoftheHill., on Flickr
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Old Posted Nov 21, 2014, 2:26 PM
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Well in DC, obviously a lot of apartment/condo and mixed use buildings that look like what you expect and are publicized quite a lot. Perhaps lesser know are the traditional row house infill developments that you could go by and not even notice (every row house in these pics is new):

2000:



2001:



2008:



2010:



Incidentally the 1st and 3rd were DC Housing Authority projects.
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Old Posted Nov 21, 2014, 2:46 PM
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^^^

Really? Hmm, DC has some nice looking housing projects. They could pass for some expensive looking rowhouses for some reason (Especially the 1st one).
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Old Posted Nov 21, 2014, 3:00 PM
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For Miami: Highrises. Lots and lots of Highrises. Kind of wish there was more 5 to 10 story going up in the neighborhoods in between but the land prices are just too high. Its basically 60 stories or nothing at this point. South Beach is seeing a bunch of 5 to 8 story "filler" buildings but they can charge $2000+ per square foot so a 20 unit building can actually spec out. Little Havana could definitely use a ton of 5 to 10 story buildings. Most of Edgewater would be better off with 20 15-story buildings rather than a few 50 story buildings with land banked vacant lots around them.
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Old Posted Nov 21, 2014, 3:45 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by chris08876 View Post
^^^

Really? Hmm, DC has some nice looking housing projects. They could pass for some expensive looking rowhouses for some reason (Especially the 1st one).
Yeah, not bad. The 1st is in a historic district so I'm pretty sure it had to go through the design review. The 3rd is in a somewhat remote and low-income area and is more typical of what the agency would invest.
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Old Posted Nov 21, 2014, 4:19 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Comrade View Post
Really boring shit like this:





Meh.
Same for us in the Phoenxi area, a bunch of, about that^ sized apartment condo and hotels.

Good news is that this is actually higher density than we usually get so I cant be too mad!
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Old Posted Nov 21, 2014, 4:35 PM
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Chef did a whole thread of just that for Minneapolis! Infill:

http://www.skyscraperpage.com/forum/...ht=minneapolis

Couple years old...but there is an update with some of the newer stuff. Really, we have seen more infill than ever the past year or two.
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Old Posted Nov 21, 2014, 8:01 PM
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portland is in love with the 5 story wood apartment block styled with those cheap scandinavian-esque lines and finishes *rolls eyes*...but hey, its better then nothing i guess. deeper within single family neighborhoods, you see alot of builders actually giving a shit about neighborhood cohesion and building some nice period looking homes. unfortunately, the first wave of multifamily infill happened back in the late 70's so we have tons of those motel looking apartments. so developers have done conversions on those with so ok results. the north end of the pearl has seen some new stuff too. a few chunky apartment blocks and two new apartment towers going up. the lloyd district is in full swing with a nice apartment tower and 4 massive wood frame apartment blocks. they look ok i guess.....
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Old Posted Nov 21, 2014, 8:44 PM
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I should add that six-story woodframes (or 7 if they have units with lofts) in 65' zones are very common in that 15% of Seattle I mentioned. If we've added 60,000 units in 20 years, that's the largest single element. We also have 45' zones, so there's a lot of four-story too.

This details locations of 64,000 units of net addition within city limits since 1995. The areas called urban villages, urban centers, etc. are the 15%. http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/cs/groups...dpdd017580.pdf
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Old Posted Nov 21, 2014, 9:39 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hauntedheadnc View Post
[SIZE="5"]So... Urban living is in! It's the hip, with it, now trend nowadays, and this article discusses what that means for a city with extremely varied terrain. In a nutshell, we're now seeing houses shoehorned in on just about every free scrap of land remaining inside the city limits. To make them fit, builders are having to get very creative
Yeesh, that house is on a 7,000 square foot lot. That's hardly urban in my mind. Know split that lot up into 3 or 4 lots and build that style house on each one and you've got something that's a lot more urban.
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Old Posted Nov 21, 2014, 9:41 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kingofthehill View Post

P1470048 by KingoftheHill., on Flickr

P1460557 by KingoftheHill., on Flickr

P1460714 by KingoftheHill., on Flickr
Holy shit, YES!!!
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Old Posted Nov 21, 2014, 10:09 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by wong21fr View Post
Yeesh, that house is on a 7,000 square foot lot. That's hardly urban in my mind. Know split that lot up into 3 or 4 lots and build that style house on each one and you've got something that's a lot more urban.
That's really not the point. The point is that people are strongly preferring to live inside the city rather than just near it, and the article goes on to note this specifically when it points out the residents of that house can walk to the River Arts District, and hook up to the greenway system.

As the crush for in-town living goes on, you might see even hard to build lots like the one in the article being subdivided, although I would wonder just how much density you can pack onto a 38-degree slope in a place that gets more than 40 inches of rain in a normal year. Either way, though, I'm just happy that things are going on in town rather than just close to it.

Edit: I also just remembered that there are several places in town where remaining lots have been subdivided to make room for cheek-to-jowl tower houses. Houses like that are sprouting like weeds, packed as close as physically possible in neighborhoods like Kenilworth, near the hospital. The people featured in the article though, likely have the money to buy some space.
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Old Posted Nov 21, 2014, 10:16 PM
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Buildings and their foundation/shoring systems can stabilize slopes if designed properly. Also they're very often lighter than the dirt they replace.

It's great to fill those 7,000 sf lots. But I agree that that's not very urban, even if there's a good reason for not using all of the land.
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Old Posted Nov 21, 2014, 10:52 PM
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mhays, I must say I was really impressed with the level of dense infill in many parts of Seattle. It looked like half of all the buldings in the city were built within the last 5 years--but more impressive was that the infill actually all looked very attractive, and as though it will age decently through the coming years.

I'm kind of surprised Seattle has only 8,000ppl, it seems quite a bit denser and more compact than that.

How walkable would you say Seattle is as a whole?

SF has had a surge in infill since 2013 and seems slated to continue on the upswing. Market Street in the Castro, as well as SoMa, has really boomed. SO many ex-parking lots are being put to very good use.


http://thumbs.trulia-cdn.com/picture...o-CA-94110.jpg


http://cdn.cstatic.net/images/gridfs...f/IMG_0107.JPG


https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/i...9eqtkzE8ykvS7R


http://cdn.cstatic.net/images/gridfs...%20dolores.jpg


http://www.californiahomedesign.com/...?itok=USWReEIe
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Old Posted Nov 21, 2014, 11:06 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mhays View Post
Buildings and their foundation/shoring systems can stabilize slopes if designed properly. Also they're very often lighter than the dirt they replace.

It's great to fill those 7,000 sf lots. But I agree that that's not very urban, even if there's a good reason for not using all of the land.
Good to know about stabilization, and perhaps when there is a need for it, such large, steep lots will be subdivided accordingly. However, the fact remains that demand for in-town (urban or not) living is reaching such a pitch here that previously written-off lots are now being developed with a unique style of architecture particular to this area and this city. That is the point of the article and of this thread. The debate about whether rich people building a single house on a big lot being urban or not is immaterial to the thread.

What I want to know is with the increasing demand for urban (or just in-town) living, what sort of infill is that generating in various cities? Are some cities, like mine is doing, having to resort to creative solutions to fill unused lots? Are some cities, like Charlotte and most other Sun Belt metropoli, seeing interchangeable Sim City-esque glass condo boxes and bland contemporary boxes?

What's going on with infill where you are? That's what I want to know about, not whether or not something is urban by the standards of a major city. Where I live is a small city. It's urban for what it is, and very high quality urbanity at that, but I already know it's practically a country village compared to a city of millions like Seattle.
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