Condos and apartment houses are one way to increase urban density. In established residential neighborhoods near downtown Portland, people are invested in their home and have no interest in deconstructing it to build condos. Rather than deconstruction of valued single family homes, the property owner could consider the option to build a structural-steel support straddling the home and serving as the foundation for a second home directly above.
What if home owners could sell the property above their house? Within a few miles of downtown Portland, the city could allow innovative zoning to allow straddle-structure homes in residential neighborhoods to encourage dense urban growth.
Tags: Dense Growth, Urban Planning
April 20, 2009 at 11:04 am
Arthur:
Just got your 2nd. letter…”Straddle-Structures” sounds like a great idea. I like your idea of proposing it to Portland Planning to wake them up to an interesting concept for the future. I have oftentimes suggested to my clients a similar concept in order to add to their buildings without adding a structural loading surcharge to their building…Most people that want to enlarge their building-home usually have a small, obsolete, inefficient, weak, delicate building-structure and will have to do major increases of structural capacity (enlarge foundations+footings/beef up the framing/do seismic analyses of undersized elements, etc.)…older buildings were designed and built rather cheaply without sophisticated structural engineering (if at all!)…therefore the validity of your idea. Another aspect to consider is if one wants to go over an existing building usually
one will demolish the existing structure to make room for an entirely new safe, attractive project respecting all the current codes, planning regulations, etc. Again the current zoning-planing codes most likely wouldn’t allow much if any, increase in height…One would have to look at each individual site to see if this approach is practical, etc. I have always felt that planning + zoning codes are mostly obsolete and of a different era and actually thwart creative thinking such as what you are suggesting…Ithink it is worth pursuing!
My modular concept ( as well as one I know of back east for large spanning structures ) can accommodate any type of situation. I actually proposed to overspan a vacant funeral home in Sellwood for an office-condo project…maybe that one would be a good one to focus on??!!
Let’s talk further…
Roy
Roy Ettinger
info@allaboutbuildings.com
http://www.allaboutbuildings.com