Episode Summary

  1. Micro apartment projects continue to be funded and constructed across the country.
  2. Highways ripped apart our downtown cores. Cities are looking for ways to bring stakeholders to the table to help start reversing that trend and creating human scale places.
  3. Every journey, commute, vacation, errand, outing begins and ends on foot. If you have to start in a car, you're less likely to switch modes.

Micro high rise in Austin (3 min read)

Removing a highway in Detroit (2 min read)

High speed rail in Tampa Bay (4 min read)

Plus: The tactical urbanism guide from Mike Lydon and Tony Garcia (132 page pdf). What might you be able to do this spring?

Episode Transcript

Hey everyone. I’m Kyle Gulau and on this show, patterns of development, we take less than 10 minutes each week to deconstruct what's going on in real estate, architecture, and urban planing.

We're looking for case studies, data, and peer reviewed work, to consider and and inform conversations in your community. My own personal goal is that I'll build some pattern recognition, and apply some of this experienced thinking in my own backyard.

This week a play on words in our episode name. If you haven't guessed it. The missing word is High...high rise, highway...high speed rail.

3 projects across the country all worth making observations on:

Micro apartments continue to be a thing. A project in Austin Tx on East 6th Street. Some of you maybe be familiar with 6th street. It is the party street. Anyway, go east, and you'll find this development. Micro apartments continue to be a thing. They've been built in my town. I'm considering building a couple in my next project. The trick here is you get closer to affordability by reducing the square footage. It's not a great solution for families but as the article states "perfect for the urban minimalist." I lived in a micro, my significant other called it our dorm room. So there's a pattern -- smaller spaces to get closer to affordability but is that really practical for couples and families? This project is estimated to be completed in about 1 year.

Removing a section of highway in Detroit. The 1-mile stretch of I-375 in downtown Detroit could be replaced with a boulevard amid a federal review of the project. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Mayor Mike Duggan discussed plans to dismantle the freeway Wednesday. Why this is important is undoing some of the destructive planning practices in the post-war era. I guess I should be more specific...post-world war 2 era. For those familiar with the practice typically highways would be dragged through urban areas to make them more accessible by car. Unfortunately those areas the highway went through were almost always areas populated by people of color. The pattern with projects like this is the level of complication. There are multiple stakeholders city, state, and federal organizations need to be brought to the table to make this happen. This project isn't slated to start until 2027 and would take 3 years to complete. \

Project #3 for the week. Highspeed rail in Tampa. The city notorious dangerous to pedestrians is planning to have a station in Ybor City by 2028. The big move here is connecting Orlando's international airport to a transportation hub in/near downtown Tampa. Patterns here: notice the dates, public projects take a lot longer than private projects. Probably not a surprise but now it's at least more than speculation. And...and. There's one line in this article that is crucial. Quoting Christine Kefauver, "When we get to Tampa, that first- and last-mile mobility is critical,”. That's right. Transportation projects success live or die by that mantra. Similar to amazon getting a package to you. How can people manage that first and last mile of their journey. If they have to get in a car, they're probably just going to stay in car.

And just for fun this week I stumbled across and read through the tactical urbanism guide from Mike Lydon and Tony Garcia. Believe it or not, I have not read the book. Loved the guide. They introduce a 7 step process:

  • Inspire action
  • Draw attention to perceived shortcomings
  • Widen public engagement
  • Deepen understanding
  • Gather data
  • Encourage people to work together
  • Test

Sounds a lot like design thinking. What small little thing can we do to inform our next thing. I love it. It's got me fired up for spring.

Which leads us to our patterns of the week:

  1. Micro apartment projects continue to be funded and constructed across the country.
  2. Highways ripped apart our downtown cores. Cities are looking for ways to bring stakeholders to the table to help start reversing that trend and creating human scale places.
  3. Every journey, commute, vacation, errand, outing begins and ends on foot. If you have to start in a car, you're less likely to switch modes.

That's all for this week. Talk to you soon.