Looking from 10,000 feet
Bruce Adib-Yazdi
While I don’t want to lose focus of the work that needs to happen for the current College Street Planning effort, sometime a little perspective helps inform the process.
We have all been talking about College Street from Grant to Kansas Expressway, which is a small piece of the overall puzzle. Something to consider as we look at this piece is to go up to about 10,000 feet and look down. Consider some of the following:
· Springfield Metro area is currently 436,712.
· Growth rate over the last 10 years has been 1.9%
· Projecting that forward that means by the year 2048 we will double the metro area to nearly 900,000
· That is only 38 years away – many of us will see that in our lifetime.
· Consider that many of the people moving here will come from larger places seeking a more relaxed lifestyle.
· Make an assumption that only 5% of those new people would like to live in an urban environment (downtown)
· That’s over 20,000 people.
· Where will those people live, work, shop, go to school, etc.?
The ideal place is along the north and south side of Jordan Valley between Chestnut Expressway and Walnut and between National and Kansas Expressway. These areas will also probably expand west to the point where College and Chestnut meet, and east to where Trafficway goes under Glenstone.
With College street we are looking at a small piece of a much larger idea, but this will help set the tone for future planning efforts. If you have not looked at this document you should – it’s about a 50 MB download, but will give you some thoughts on this bigger view of what we are doing.
Bruce Adib-Yazdi, AIA
Butler, Rosenbury & Partners
Bruce Adib-Yazdi
I forgot the link to the document:
http://www.springfieldmo.gov/planning/pdfs/jvConceptPlan.pdf