NEW URBANISM ROAD TRIP -- PART 6
Cruising into Broward County, we see the reason New Urbanism is so popular.
Other than a few good examples of dense, walkable, mixed-used development along the beaches and in the downtowns of Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood, Broward is Sprawl City.
Sitting in traffic-choked roads from the Federal Highway to the edge of the Everglades, rolling past strip malls and apartment villages too numerous to count, one ponders the possibility of tearing up all the post 1940s development and starting over.
That’s exactly what they’re doing in Lauderdale Lakes, where the former CVV firm designed St. Croix, a development of 246 rental units and 16,000 square feet of retail on a 12.5 acre site.
The land once housed a failed strip shopping center along a US 441.
The project is worth a visit to see how it contrasts with the decaying sprawl around it.
Look at all the neighboring stuff up and down the street.
Aging strip malls have ugly parking lots in front of the stores.
Apartment complexes, condos and houses are isolated from community, retail and other uses.
St. Croix is the opposite of that. The development of affordable, workforce housing created traditional urban fabric through the use of blocks, streets and plazas.
It has a pool house, club house and tot lot. The retail space has a job center, child care and other services.
Other Broward communities are clamoring for New Urbanist redevelopment projects. Perhaps this fervor is why The New York Times dubbed New Urbanism “the most important phenomenon to emerge in American architecture in the post-Cold War era."
Tomorrow: Miami-Dade County
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