CNU and affiliated designers visited a sprawling part of Charlotte to plan the transition of a 16-acre shopping center into a mixed-use center, with connections to a major university—UNCC. Temporary public space drives suburban retrofit.
The challenge for University City in Charlotte is two-fold: Finding a way to humanize a classic ‘edge city’ while providing an off-campus gathering space for a major research university, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC). By focusing on the public realm first, a team of designers have identified ways to meet those goals—with important implications for the university and the city has a whole.
This is a tremendous opportunity for the land owners to capture value hidden in plain sight, as students and faculty expressed clear desire for a campus-adjacent center. Pairing the initial investment in mixed-use residential with a programmable public space will drive value for the first phase and provide the social activities and a gathering place that is not easily found off campus.
– Mike Lydon, Street Plans
During a three-day charrette, Designers from Perkins+Will and Street Plans planned six urban blocks and a town square. The University City District sponsored the charrette with CNU, and UNCC architectural students contributed ideas, along with remote advice from suburban retrofit guru Ellen Dunham-Jones.
The occasion was a Legacy Project, an annual design and implementation event that applies CNU’s placemaking expertise to make a difference in the Congress’s host region—in this case Charlotte (CNU 31 will take place there May 31-June 3). During a three-day charrette, Designers from Perkins+Will and Street Plans planned six urban blocks and a town square. The University City District sponsored the charrette with CNU, and UNCC architectural students contributed ideas, along with remote advice from suburban retrofit guru Ellen Dunham-Jones.
Tactical urbanism offers a strategy for public space to drive site development and activity, says David Green of Perkins+Will, who credited Mike Lydon of Street Plans with advancing this line of thinking. “This was particularly ingenious because it framed the conversation around an intervention that is initially cost effective, which provides immediate returns, so it wasn’t hard for people to embrace,” Green says. Now the discussion revolved around the design of a strong place, or public framework, that anchored the project. What followed was a logical, compelling testing of various scenarios that reduce risk for the developers and freed designers to focus on programming and reinforcing the public realm—rather than particular uses on the site. “The big takeaway for me was using something seemingly ephemeral to create something permanent,” he explains.
Read the full piece in the CNU Journal Public Square.