Almere, Netherlands

[czsz]

We've all seen the images of Amsterdam's Java Island, which everyone considers a good prototype of what a contemporary Boston rowhouse could look like if an area like the Seaport had actually been developed along the same lines as the South End or Back Bay.

Here's another Dutch planning project worth noting: Almere, a new town that's planned to surpass Amsterdam in population someday. The central parts of Almere are somewhat weird, mall-like pedestrian spaces.

But the interesting parts are further from the center, where authorities have sold individual lots that have resulted in lots of interesting piecemiel, vernacular rowhouse construction:

These small apartment blocks don't look so bad either:

Proof positive that, for all that it seems impossible, modern cities don't have to look like the superblocked-out corporate midrise cemetaries of the Seaport or Kendall. Add a few floors to these houses and you'd have a fascinating modern neighborhood at central Boston densities.

More on Almere:

http://gellersworldtravel.blogspot.com/2012/04/more-on-almere-and-self-build-housing.html

 

[Beton Brut]

 

[itchy]

HOLY CRAP.

That is really fantastic. I've never seen anything like that: rowhouses going up on individual lots outside an already well-established city center, either in contemporary Europe or the US.

Honestly, despite my own deep desire to see something like a "21st-century Back Bay" emerge in the Seaport, I'd been skeptical the economics of it would ever really work in this day and age, and we'd end up with craptastic alucobond brownstones ("alucostones"?).

Java Island and Almere really are proof-positive that we can get something better than another Waltham office park in the Seaport. So ... is there any freaking way to realize something like that at this point?

 

[Shepard]

I'd say that most of the Seaport has become too over-speculated now and therefore too valuable as large-lot development to allow for this anymore, unfortunately. But I think the area with potential for this is the Papas properties to the southeast of the Convention Center facing onto the Reserve Channel. As other threads have shown, South Boston has been proliferating with small footprint development, and the Papas properties could cement this as a planning/development technique up a revitalized E/F Street corridor.

 

[czsz]

I'd say that most of the Seaport has become too over-speculated now and therefore too valuable as large-lot development to allow for this anymore, unfortunately. But I think the area with potential for this is the Papas properties to the southeast of the Convention Center facing onto the Reserve Channel. As other threads have shown, South Boston has been proliferating with small footprint development, and the Papas properties could cement this as a planning/development technique up a revitalized E/F Street corridor.

Agreed with this. Do you think there's no possibility of higher density small-lot construction in the Seaport though? Something like the apartment buildings above?

With some kind of law limiting lot maximums not even over-speculation would be an issue, necessarily. It might help eliminate a lot of the architectural inefficiencies that plague this area (towers on podiums, over-provision of open space, streets turned into alleys by housing service entrances, etc.)

 

[itchy]

Some kind of law limiting lot maximums

+1