Retrofitting Suburbia

— by Jeffrey Wisniewski — 8 March 2010 — Comments Off

A few images of Hercules were included at the beginning of a recent TED lecture titled Retrofitting Suburbia.

The images (see below) show the potential transformation of the intersection of Sycamore and San Pablo Avenues (or the city’s “Main and Main”), which originally came about during the 2000 charette. The images however do not reflect the current plan, as the Central Hercules Plan called for liner buildings surrounding the now-former park-n-ride site, and not for the relocation of the site altogether (which took place last year).

Main and Main Before

Main and Main After

The plans for Market Town (the first phase of New Town Center) do not include buildings immediately adjacent to San Pablo Avenue along the entire length of the project site, and instead features a rather large open area, effectively a new town square…

Market Town

There are no plans yet to infill the Shell station plaza with liner buildings as well, but that would be a nice touch to finish the very prominent intersection.

The lecture was given by Ellen Dunham-Jones, author of Retrofitting Suburbia…