Is Jacksonville's Urban Sprawl Unique?

[tufsu1]

transit can work in suburbs....there is no magic number on density needed to support buses or rail.

case in point....I learned today that JTA had 1.25 million rides in October....that's their highest month ever...if that held up for the year, it would mean 15 million trips (which would be more than a 15% increase).

so even a limited/challenged transit system in a sprawling city can attract ridership.

[simms3]

Transit works very well in CA suburbs, which are literally built around transit or with transit in mind.  Same with DC suburbs.  My point is that many sunbelt suburban land use patterns no matter how dense make effective transit difficult.  My big question is how Southpoint is going to one day be connected to transit.  And Jacksonville's bus ridership is about the lowest in the country despite the overall density of the urban landscape relative to some of its peers receiving higher bus ridership.

[thelakelander]

Transit can work in any setting when you have complementing land use policy and effective connectivity.  It doesn't matter if you're packing 10,000 people per square mile or 3,000. For example, DART and the San Diego Trolley seem to be pretty decent in tying in certain suburban corridors.  Transit can work in Jacksonville but we'll a have to come to the reality that some areas/corridors in town are significantly better than others.  Thus, in some sections, we need to beef up and others retract to eliminate.  In short, you can't treat Jax as an 800-square mile one place fits all type of city.  In reality were a +30 square mile city surrounded by +750 square miles of suburbs and rural area.

[spuwho]

In some ways, yes, Jax sprawl is unique in that there are few entities like COJ that have centralized control over such a large area of undeveloped space. However, a lot of that space cannot or will not be developed.  Be it wetlands, swamp or greenbelt. This can cause some density and continuity issues.

Most sprawl in other locales in the last generation can be traced to civic entities not in coordination with each other due to a simple lack of understanding of urban planning. In the case of Jax, it seems to be a case of the internal entities not coordinating with each other or having too diverse of agendas.

It would be fascinating to see what would happen if COJ announced a cap on building permits or PUD's outside a geographical demarcation inside Duval County. Would it accelerate flight to the collar counties? Or would it accelerate development of urban infill? One city did use a moratorium based on geographics and was highly successful, but the demographics of Jax may not be so tenable to that kind of approach.

[Ocklawaha]

Interesting comment on ridership TUFSU1, JTA has actually managed to pull closer to another system...

MIAMI METROMOVER - 28,700 passengers daily x 4.4 miles = 6,522 passengers per mile per day. The key is the Miami system is down 1.68%.

JACKSONVILLE SKYWAY - 5,100 passengers daily x 2.5 miles = 2040 passengers per mile per day. Jacksonville's Skyway is UP 100%.

Otherwise we have an interesting SPRAWL that really is quite different then any other city. Our Rivers and Creeks as well as our coast line have dictated both travel and development patterns for a few hundred years. Lakeshore, Fairfax, Ortega Farms, Tallulah, Panama Park, Commodore Point, Venetia, etc... all defined by water.

I personally think we handle places like Southpont, Gate Parkway, Deerwood, Bay Center, Executive Park, Freedom Commerce Park, Western Way and Centurion Parkway area's by being creative. We could start with a fixed route, close headways, electric shuttle bus. The route would take the bus up close to the major buildings and the corporations could be brought into the planning process. The bus would stop at covered shelters or under awnings or roof extensions to make for a clean, weatherproof boarding. The system would be designed to get the maximum amount of people to the nearest commuter rail/BRT/light-rail station, while coming as close as possible to a number of restaurants, hotels, and special event facilities.

The ultimate goal would be a cutting edge, low cost, fixed rail system such as the Intamin Transportation Systems P-6 Monorail. Unlike the Skyway the P-6 is light enough that it's cost is attractive to fair operators, amusement parks and office complexes.  http://data.sphosting.ch/Intamin/Media/People%20Mover%20P6/P6.pdf 

Corporate buy-in would be key to developing such a solution. 

Another system is the Areomovel Rail System - http://www.aeromovel.com

and still another is the Doppelmayr Cable Car - http://www.dcc.at

http://www.youtube.com/v/J6tAwd5jYFQ

[thelakelander]

^Where did you get the 5,100 number for Jacksonville?

[Ocklawaha]

Third Quarter Repot from the APTA at:

http://www.apta.com/resources/statistics/Documents/Ridership/2012-q3-ridership-APTA.pdf

Column 1 / Page 15

I believe it proved our long-standing argument with the City that if the Skyway was fare-free and seamlessly integrated into the bus-transit system it would be at least a modest success.

[tufsu1]

^Where did you get the 5,100 number for Jacksonville?

the figures JTA released yesterday show that the Skyway had over 100,000 trips in October....on many weekends, it is not running, but I would assume it was for Florida-Georgia....and of course it now runs on Community First Saturdays.

[simms3]

Going back to density conversation, this blurb came out in my email.

The average household income in 2011 within three miles of the Krog Street Market development site was approximately $83,949, according to SRS Real Estate Partners, which is leasing the project. Also, the area has approximately 70,354 households with a population of 152,452.

Anyone can do the math...gentrifying intown neighborhood with strong income and rapidly rising, avg household size of 2.17, indicating a strong mix of both families and singles, and a density within 3 miles (28 square miles) of 5,392 ppsm, and growing rapidly.  That includes large swaths of office buildings, rail depots, ravines, shopping centers, etc.  Close to 3,000 multifamily units planned or under construction in the area, obviously all infill a la 220 Riverside, but much more confined area.

Jax needs to allow for more infill in more locations, more multifamily in Avondale, etc etc because it has the bones to have a really really dense grid like New Orleans.  There is no reason why Avondale should be close to 100% single family residential, despite the structural density.  Riverside Ave and Oak St should be promoted as corridors of density leading into Avondale, and San Marco style multifamily should be allowed into the traditional Avondale confines.  Bring more young people into the mix rather than stodgy moms and dads driving around their Lexus SUVs and Merc sedans, and you'll have a huge demand for streetcars and stuff to connect to.

With the way the street network and terrain is in Atlanta, there is no way it should be twice as dense as Jacksonville (actually the reverse).  Atlanta's core layout and model more closely follows Pittsburgh with a city center that follows Chicago's surrounded by suburbs that are laid out like DC's.  Jacksonville is on one of the best grids in the South (surrounding a river) and should strive to be a safer, cleaner New Orleans with lots of density and vibrancy with a more clean cut "growing" transient vibe.

Understandably Midtown Atl is going to be among the densest places in the south, but an Inman Park/Virginia Highlands/O4W/Morningside etc should not be more dense than Riverside/Avondale/Springfield/San Marco.

Jacksonville's sprawl is also laid out very nicely in a decent grid, so better planning should be implemented.  I am seeing more and more Atlanta style sprawl developments popup in NE FL, and there is no excuse.  Atlanta metro spent decades screwing up and the way it's laid out 50 miles in all directions is an utter nightmare.  Jax has the opportunity to at least have organized sprawl as in parts of CA, AZ, South FL, and Houston.  Having winding cul de sac roads to put office buildings and hotels on (as in South Point) will only make connectivity and transit more difficult if not impossible down the road.

[thelakelander]

I agree that Jacksonville's urban grid would provide it with some decent density via infill. However, why specifically Avondale and not Murray Hill or Five Points or were you just being generic?  How is high density infill integrated into Atlanta's historic districts?

[simms3]

Just being generic.  Murray Hill has a lot of potential if crime can be cut down (though in all honesty that shouldn't be the big hold up).

The difference between Jax and recently highlighted cities Tallahassee and Nashville and of course the master of combining old and new in lower densities, Atlanta, is that Jacksonville has a grid that makes it so easy that people have forgotten to think outside the box, and it has historic zoning regulations akin to those found in the oldest parts of Boston and New York (for areas that are not even historic for most cities).

Atlanta has no "square" sites available to develop in greenfield areas like SJTC/Gate Parkway.  Whatever site you're working with, small or large, the grade is highly uneven and the shape is very irregular with easements running every which way across it.  Anyone who builds something in the city of Atlanta has had to learn through trial how to fully utilize odd sites, so you have a lot of talented people able to integrate newer designs of higher densities into older neighborhoods.  Across from a development I worked on, which reworked an old meatpacking plant into high end shopping with a 1-unit-across 9 floor condo tower next door, is a multifamily mid-rise being constructed in a very infrastructure delicate corner site (already had part of the road collapse).  It's still happening, but the site itself is much more difficult than any I can think of in Jax...developers would run away from such a site down there, and the city would probably not even allow it.

On the other side of the meatpacking plant is another multifamily development going in.  Renderings below to show how narrow it is and how they have maximized the potential of the odd site.  Most sites in Jax are a developer's wet dream of easiness.











The above required the demolition of, gasp, an abandoned school that was old but not significant by any means.

A block away this is going up (tower crane up this week):

Old rendering-


New rendering-


Site, which is below grade and just a tough overall site-


Advertising (a little different from what I picture for advertising in Jax)-


The only area not so open to new development right now, and due to archaic historic zoning laws, is the sweet auburn area where the new streetcar is going.  2 years ago a developer wanted to rehab an old building on Auburn into loft office space with a modern addition on top and in back.  The African American community freaked out that they might lose their historic neighborhood to gentrification, and so due to politics and history associated with the area it was not hard to pass intense laws not unlike those found literally everywhere in Jax.

In Inman Park, there are some residents who dislike the traffic that new development has brought to the area, and some probably dislike the modern apartments going up everywhere, but overall the residents are pretty progressive and welcome the change, which has also brought the Beltline to their backyards.  In Jax, I don't see a "Beltline" gaining political support because the fear residents would have of crime, etc, let alone the "waste of money".

So in these other cities, which are much more difficult to develop due to the way they are laid out, you have cities that welcome growth, progressive residents who welcome or at least adapt to change, developers who are talented because they have to be, and a lack of zoning laws that literally make development/change overall unfeasible.