by Max Meltzer
The trend in development and residential patterns has, in recent years, shifted towards urban centers. Cities are seeing reinvestment in downtowns, as big corporations seeking to attract top talent have opened offices in the downtowns they once abandoned. These patterns have created denser commercial and residential urban centers and cities have seen growth in their populations. Rezonings and reinvestment have reenergized downtowns across the country. What were once sleepy places after the work day have become bustling mixed use communities busy at all hours.
One driver of this trend is that many members of our generation desire to live, work, and play in areas easily accessible by mass transit and relatively easy to get to from downtown centers. There has been investment in public transit infrastructure across the nation to improve access to urban cores. Cities and governments are trying to make it easier for people to have viable transit options to get to the city from their homes for work, through both ride sharing apps and other more traditional transit methods. Furthermore, cities are working hard to make sure that their downtowns are attractive to both businesses and potential new residents. More people in the city means more tax dollars and additional reinvestment. Higher density means the city can focus services in a smaller area. No one would blame a city for trying to maximize the potential for development.
However, something fairly radical is going on in Denver, or more accurately, outside of Denver’s downtown. Technology giant Panasonic is planning a massive office complex within a brand new development 12 miles outside of Denver’s thriving downtown. The building will be a hub for “Panasonic Enterprise Solutions, the company’s “smart city” branch. To put the proposal in its urban and regional context, to the east of the office is Denver Airport and to the west is a wildlife refuge that is 20 times larger than Central Park. [1]
If all goes according to plan, in 20 years, the tract of land around the office, which will be roughly the size of Denver’s current downtown, will be home to 55,000 residents in addition to offices, shops, and restaurants. The site will be anchored by a new stop on Denver’s expanding light rail network and will be the first “aviation station” on the line from the airport to Denver’s downtown. Panasonic and the developer of the site are hedging their bets on the “viability of the aerotropolis,”or the attraction of living with easy access to the airport.
The project is modeled after the Fujisawa Station 30 miles outside of Tokyo, Japan, where Panasonic also has an office. Opened in 2014, developments like Fujiswawa, according to a March article in NextCity,[2] represent “techno-centric visions of an urban future that companies like CISCO, IBM and other tech giants have sold to governments and developers around the world.” They feature “smart city” amenities like solar panels on every roof, car sharing, bike sharing, light rail, and real time energy consumption monitoring. Additionally, Panasonic is developing a digital mirror that will brief residents on their weight gain and sleep patterns. The town will award points for residents’ contributions to civic life, and publicize those point totals for motivational purposes.
It is as though Panasonic is trying to build what will become essentially Denver’s second downtown. But it’s more than that; Panasonic is looking to construct a new type of urban living. A type of living that is so intelligent that it demands a newly-constructed district since it can’t be overlaid or implemented into existing US downtown business district infrastructure. Though Panasonic is not explicitly saying so, there are huge policy, development and planning implications riding on the success or failure of this new Pena Station community, as it will be called.
This type of planning, if done correctly, has the potential to replace new sprawl or even mitigate effects of current sprawl by attracting residents from the suburbs or exurbs into a new type of urban community outside of the CBD. These new smart communities in the city but outside of downtowns and with their own downtown-like areas, may become denser and more compact. They may also help alleviate some stress that exists on downtowns already, if they are reaching or nearing their population capacity. People may be attracted to having everything within a community, with all the benefits of downtown life, without actually having to be in downtown to get it.
These developments on the other hand, may grow immensely and end up creating cities that are poly-nucleated with multiple CBD’s potentially competing for the same businesses and workers. This may be good for the city as well. If the city has a finite supply of land in its existing downtown, these new developments may be a blessing. This sort of project is possible in a place like Denver, a city with large, undeveloped parcels of land close to its existing urban cores. But what about a city where this is not the case? Will this sort of intelligent development be possible in a city like New York, or Los Angeles, or Chicago? If it is not, could these cities lose a grip on industries they’ve had for years due to technology driving a new lifestyle?
If this sort of development does become the wave of the future, it will be important to make sure that it is scalable, otherwise, we could see a dramatic shift in economic activity in cities in the not distant future.
[1] https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/denver-panasonic-smart-city-project
[2] https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/denver-panasonic-smart-city-project