Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford
I can't think of one example in these places. Downtown Bellevue is a downtown district. It was never built as postwar sprawl on cornfields, like Southfield.
Places like Bethesda and Pasadena are downtown districts. They don't share any historical similarities with somewhere like Southfield. Southfield was built 100% car-oriented, in the 60's and 70's. There is no "base" of prewar built form, so there is nothing to grow. You would need to demolish everything and start over from scratch.
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Downtown Bellevue was farmland until after WWII when a bridge crossed Lake Washington from Seattle, then it was built as low-density suburbia much like Southfield. Most of what's there now is second generation. It's precisely the model we're talking about.