Granular urbanism : adaptive strategies for obsolete downtown neighborhoods

Tackling the problem of obsolescence in North American cities, this thesis interrogates the question of how we should plan for the regeneration of aging office buildings. I argue that current whole-building, coarse-grained office-to-residential conversion results in entire urban neighborhoods turning into "sanitized vertical suburbia" (Moss 2017) that fail to create balanced, affordable, and inclusive communities. In response, this thesis offers a new floor-by-floor "fine-grained" (Lynch 1981) framework for space conversion. As a case study, I look at conversions In Manhattan's busy financial district that have created an instant elite neighborhood, with 10,000 new luxury units developed over the past fifteen years. To address hyper-gentrification generated by current conversion methods, I introduce a 3D Design and Data Toolkit (DDT) that redefines the conversion process and offers a selective, floor-by-floor approach to balance the quantity and mix of new residential units with the quality of urban life. This tool helps city planners, urban designers, and developers identify spaces for conversion and match demand and supply across scales. As such, this work offers a strategic, multi-scaled approach aimed at reducing grain, increasing market potential, and reinforcing urban vitality in a new conversion process.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Titelboim, Yair(Yair Yakov)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Rafi Segal and Brent D. Ryan.

• Urban Studies and Planning.
• Architecture.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/129932

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/129932