THE ‘FUZZY URBANISM’ OF MARKHAM SQUARE HOUSING DISTRICT

The urban square and the forested hillocks.

Housing is an issue of territory as much as it is of building. The Markham Square Housing District, a downtown regeneration proposal for a vacated industrial metal yard in Conway, is a housing approach beginning with the concept of a living transect that connects the square and shared streets to building frontage, housing court and patio, and interior space — all articulated as a series of rooms. This invokes Christopher Alexander’s pattern language No. 122 to design the front edge of the building as a place. Building frontages should create “scalloped edges” or a fuzzy urbanism. Thick building edges accommodate a variety of social activities through urban building frontage (porches, balconies, decks, stoops and terraces), liminal spaces not specific to one housing type. The goal is to incentivize living downtown by structuring a walkable mixed-income neighborhood for a downtown that lacks a tradition of multifamily housing.

Two primary place types cluster housing around distinct urban landscapes for ecological and social repair. An extroverted residential square with shared streets articulated as a rain terrain features a neighborhood art park in a “wilded” landscape supporting ecological-based stormwater management (the park has been built). Shared streets are designed to be destinations rather than traffic arteries. They compel motorists to behave socially. Shared streets are designed to keep traffic speeds under 17 miles per hour, the threshold up to which pedestrians and motorists can maintain eye contact and socially negotiate their shared use of the right-of-way. While the square foregrounds stormwater treatment landscapes, a new forested hillock on a remediated brownfield provides a more discrete neighborhood node for stormwater treatment landscapes on the garden-side of multifamily units. The hillock adds a piece of suburbia as the backyard becomes a unique landscape opposite the home’s urban front.

The project recalls affordable walk-up residential typologies — rowhouses, bungalows, triplexes, courtyard housing and townhouses — that have not been built since the hegemony of suburban policy in the 1950s. Now, these affordable types are key to revitalizing mid-sized downtowns without the population dislocations accompanying gentrification. Housing types ranging between 900 and 2,100 square feet accommodate a mixed-income neighborhood, particularly for workforce populations lacking transportation options. Housing typologies pair economy of means (targeted construction costs between $150-$200/SF) with good town form and amenities that deliver an optimal living transect.

University of Arkansas Community Design Center, an outreach center of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design. This project was made possible by funding from the National Endowment for the Arts “Art Works” Program.

Scan for the list of participants on this project.

The Urban Corner

Filling in the gap.

So many undeveloped corners in downtown Little Rock’s core are reminiscent of a missing tooth in the urban smile of our city. Here is a cost-effective implant … so to speak!

This mixed-use design is intended for infills in the edges of the urban fabric as it transitions into residential neighborhoods or smaller-scale commercial. It occupies a quarter-block-size site. This is a type prevalent in downtown, though many are used as surface parking lots. The modest two-story walk-up, with commercial tenant space on the ground floor and six apartments on the second floor, plays well with the residential neighbors while at the same time provides an active street frontage. The building addresses the corner enforcing the urban fabric and scale, specific to downtown Little Rock. The complex could be mirrored and complete a half-block or even full block, with parking and deliveries behind the building, and in some cases accessible by alleyway.

The efficient layout of the building packs a lot of use into a small footprint, resulting in a dense, vibrant development that can benefit the experience of the downtown Little Rock streetscape. The ground floor retail level is flexible for two or three tenants and sized to better fit the scale needs of today’s more modest local eateries and shops. The six upper-floor residential “walk-ups” are geared toward a market demand for budget-friendly housing solutions for the younger rental market with an assortment of one-bedroom units with nice amenities like balconies that look out over the street, open living space and inunit washers and dryers. All of this fits within 12,500 square feet of construction.

The scale is such that the construction type has flexibility, the financial risk is scalable and the style of exterior skin can be customized to the immediate context. The Urban Corner is a great idea to start to build back a more dense urban fabric and a more vibrant smile in downtown Little Rock!