An Incredibly Smart Way to Live.
The ultimate objective of a Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND) is to enhance a community’s vitality, distinctiveness, and value through creating a variety of housing types, functional land uses, and amenities. Typically designed as a village-style neighborhood, a TND seeks to remedy problems associated with sprawl and auto-dependency by creating a compact, self-contained community with smart land utilization practices. This comprehensive approach to neighborhood planning aims to create a balanced, high quality community that is designed to accommodate a wide range of home and business owners.
These developments often utilize infill land in an existing pre-developed area as a way to “upcycle” and repurpose property that had a former function. This adaptive reuse of land often involves preservation of historic structures, along with newly constructed commercial businesses.
Residential and commercial districts are often co-located, with streets and lanes suitable for pedestrians as well as vehicles. This design ultimately provides residents the option of walking or biking to places within their neighborhood.
Gold Hill Mesa is representative of a TND with the robust mix of architectural styles and a community gathering space at its core. Laid out on a grid for walkability with a network of well-connected streets, public spaces, and alleyways, Gold Hill Mesa is built in a compact neighborhood scale typical of TNDs.
In keeping with TND principles, multi-use planning and functionality will also exist in Gold Hill Mesa’s commercial district that will include preservation of a smoke stack that stands as an emblem of entrepreneurship and industrialism from the Golden Cycle Mill that operated on the property at the turn of the century. A surrounding plaza with civic spaces and aesthetic improvements are planned to surround the stack. Additional mixed uses will include retail, civic, businesses, and entertainment establishments.
Where most developers choose the more familiar, less risky, conventional sprawl model, with a quicker return on their investment, a Traditional Neighborhood Development is a complex undertaking that requires a developer who has a bold vision to implement smart growth practices and a sensibility toward building more holistically for a sustainable future.
BENEFITS OF A TRADITIONAL NEIGHBORHOOD:
- Creates walkable neighborhoods
- Brings life to communities by allowing mixtures of uses
- Encourages transportation mode options
- Protects open space
- Preserves “village center” and public spaces concept
- Creates communities designed for live, work and play
- Reduces vehicle congestion
- Encouraging economic diversity and vitality
- Encouraging development into areas that can best accommodate it
- Using existing land and infrastructure
- Preserving and reusing structures of historical and/or architectural significance
- Encouraging development patterns similar to original neighborhoods, including pedestrian scale
- Encouraging economic expansion, job creation and stability
- Minimizing traffic congestion caused by new development