This morning's Press-Citizen mentions the Jamestown Project, a colorful Young Urbanist idea to add zip to Johnson County (specifically Coralville) housing developments to make it more palatable to younger, creative-culturist Iowans. Meanwhile, the Three Bulls are planning a 13 story condo project in downtown Iowa city called "the Vu" (I wonder if they cleared it with Barbara Walters and Rosie O'Donnell).
Life is full of ironies. The Jamestown project "is a completely new housing concept and living experience for the Corridor area. Progressive urban design... Quality green-friendly infrastructure... Customizable interiors... Common recreational area... Walking distance to services, retail stores & attractions." This would be built on land that the City of Coralville owns (by forcing low-income mobile home dwellers to vacate).
On the one hand, it is compact development with the kinds of bells and whistles that resonate with New Urbanists and Green Builders, but on the other, it is affordable housing that is not, on the face, also inclusive housing. There is nothing inherently wrong with the idea, but it is clear that making this housing also affordable, but excluding to those who actually benefit the most by this type of housing strikes me as perverse.
I freely admit that I don't know enough about this project to arrive at any conclusions about what the whole story is.
The Vu project, on the other hand, has, no pun intended, lofty ambitions. Casey Boyd, a partner in the development company with Swen Larson and former Iowa football player Tim Dwight, said the team is in the early stages of planning for the project, including initial discussions with Iowa City. "This is a real big project that we are working on," Boyd said. "It's going to be great."
The operative words being "big" and "great"--like a HumVee. Again, without the details, it is too early to throw too many stones.
No comments:
Post a Comment