Project Details

Infill Site Analysis and Redevelopment

5 week project

Infill development, creating new strategies for sustainable reuse of previously developed urban and suburban sites, will soon become the dominant form of development in communities across the US. Planners will play a key role in creating these new strategies. The final class project for PLAN 6010 Planning Process and Practice challenged first-year graduate planning students to examine and enhance a site with the intention of implementing principles of good planning and design while benefiting the surrounding community.

Five sites around the city of Charlottesville were chosen for examination. Each of the sites represents an “opportunity area” because of being strategically located at a prominent place in the community, already served by basic urban infrastructure, and containing a mix of existing uses. Moreover, if left alone, all five sites are likely to decline in their benefit and contribution to their neighborhood and to the larger community. To take advantage of the opportunities found at these sites, students needed to integrate an awareness of the site’s past and current situation with an open minded and creative exploration of possible futures. For each site, students provided a vision of what could be and a strategy for how that vision could be achieved in a logical phasing sequence.

The images above depict two of the five sites. One group’s vision is for the Ivy Road Corridor – a mixed use area serving as a gateway from the west. The corridor includes an established Charlottesville neighborhood, a variety of small retail establishments, and connects the greater Charlottesville/Albemarle region to the University of Virginia. The second group’s scheme is for the East High Street corridor – an area containing a variety of retail and light industrial uses surrounded by established neighborhoods and adjacent to the Rivanna River and a regional bike/pedestrian trail. The corridor leads to Charlottesvilles historic downtown mall.