CIP Conference: From edge city to urban place: Tysons Corner revisited
Tags: CIP, density, edge city, mississauga, Niagara Falls, redevelopment, suburbs, toronto, transit oriented development, tysons corner, walkable neighborhoods
This session took place on October 1.
Uri Avin of Parsons Brinckerhoff and Iain Dobson of the Real Estate Search Corporation discussed edge cities and how they can be transformed into urban places. Avin described Tysons Corner, Virginia, a prototypical “edge city” and the 12th largest business district in the United States. Although Tysons Corner, located just outside of Washington, D.C. in the Dulles Airport corridor, is generally considered to be an economic success, the city suffers from an increasingly dysfunctional environmen. Dobson contrasted Tysons Corner with Mississauga, Ontario, a similar city in terms of square footage, population, jobs, and other statistics, but stagnating nonetheless.
Edge cities are typically suburban commercial, retail, and residential developments built in areas that contained no development 30 years ago. They are usually outside a larger urban area and tend to be close to highways and airports. Edge cities have been attractive to businesses, because they are able to build very large campuses over many acres. If you’re interesting in learning more, Joel Garreau’s 1991 book Edge City: Life on the New Frontier explains edge cities in detail.
Today, edge cities are becoming victims of their own success. They are not walkable (50 percent of Tysons Corner’s surface area is parking!!). The cities also suffer from too much congestion due to the lack of road connectivity and the single-use nature of many of the developments. To illustrate, an edge city may contain a couple of large office campuses, with everyone arrive to work, going to get lunch, and leaving at the same time. At other times of the day, the area remains largely empty.
Tysons Corner decided to update its plan as a result of congestion and in anticipation of the D.C. metro’s expansion into the city. The plan is going to focus growth to give Tysons Corner a more urban fabric. This involves building more roads, usually something frowned upon by more progressive urban planners. But in Tysons Corner’s case, adding roads makes sense. More roads will make the suburban block structure smaller and decrease congestion by improving connectivity. Specifically, new growth will be focused around transit stations, with the goal that 95 percent of new growth being a 5 minute walk to transit stations. This will allow more residents and jobs to come to Tysons Corner while also increasing green space. Finally, the plan is also seeks to encourage 24 hour uses. Designers of the plan are hoping that the future compact development and increased transit use will reduce Tysons Corner’s current per capita daily carbon dioxide emissions from 43 pounds to 36 pounds. Tysons Corner is fortunate in that it can demand higher density development because zoning changes, to higher densities or mixed use, are granted only after development contributions have been given, like roads, parks, and greenways.
By contrast, Mississauga has experienced little real growth in 20 years. However, at current growth rates, the city will run out of commercial space within 8 years, because the zoned density is too low. Although Mississauga has a proposed transit corridor with higher density, redevelopment is not coming. As land and development costs are still cheap in the other edge cities around Toronto, Mississauga cannot compete to attract new businesses while also pursuing a program to increase density. So, the city has decided to create amenities to attract new businesses instead. It will do this in three ways. First, Mississauga realizes that employees younger than 35 years old do now want to work and live in suburban environments. They would rather a more urban, walkable environment. Mississauga is also trying to ensure quick and predictable planning approvals. Finally, Mississauga realizes that municipal-built and operated parking structures are a good way to attract new businesses and to fund new growth with tax-increment financing.
Most of the discussion and questions about the presentation focused on how cities can make development more compact in edge cities, because planners see a chickednegg problem when it comes to density requirements and transit provision. In other words, a minimum density is required for transit to become economically viable. But, minimum density requirements on land can cause land to remain vacant for years, even decades, until the cost of the land rises enough to warrant redevelopment. Many people believe that building transit alone can cause the property values to rise. Arin and Dobson urged that minimum densities, if politically possible, are very important. If a municipality builds transit first, the density may not come, making for a costly mistake. So, transit should not be built first. Instead, a municipality should phase transit development over time or zone the land for higher density and wait for the redevelopment to arrive.
