The term urban villages sounds more like a contradiction in terms than one of the futures of residential and mixed use real estate.

But it's a growing phenomena, in places one wouldn't expect -- the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, Albuquerque, Seattle and Atlanta.

Dallas is the heart of the mega-discount, super-duper regional mega-power centers, but urban villages are starting to appear -- either by master design or gradual evolution.

Urban villages don't lend themselves to a specific definition -- it's a combination of some objective criteria and a very subjective sense of feel.

Mickey Ashmore, president and CEO of United Commercial Realty, a Dallas real estate firm, tried to explain.

"It's a place where you can shop, eat, live and work, all in the same vicinity," Ashmore said. "There is a distinct sense of place.

"The storefronts are right there on the sidewalk. Use of the buildings overlaps," he said. "A lot depends on the right existing architecture, if it's not a ground-up development, and the right eclectic mix of tenants."

One of the most important litmus tests, though, is extremely subjective.

"It's a place where you want to get out of your car and walk around. Somewhere with a real sense of place, not a generic strip mall," he said.

It wasn't that long ago that a westbound driver on Knox Street at McKinney Avenue in midtown Dallas would have been treated to a few funky retail joints and restaurants, along with a big concrete wasteland -- also known as a supermarket parking lot. Strip centers like that dominate the landscape, from San Diego to Richmond, Va., and from El Paso to Detroit.

But that vast gray parking lot is now in the rear of the new Crate & Barrel two-story store, which fronts right on the sidewalk. And, incidentally, early sales figures from the recently opened Crate & Barrel on Knox indicate sales equal to other mall locations -- at a substantially lower overhead cost. The Pottery Barn, which has been open on Knox for about three years, has had sales "as high, if not higher than" those at traditional mall or super center locations, according to an assistant manager at Pottery Barn.

Within walking distance are a wide diversity of retail stores mixed in with the office, restaurant and other space -- Z Gallerie, Restoration Hardware, Victoria's Secret, Harold's, El Paso Imports, Water Works and a Starbucks. These are just a few which United Commercial Realty, through Ashmore and senior vice president Lawrence Attaway, were involved in placing.

"About the only thing we're lacking there is a few apparel retailers to throw into the mix," he said.

Ashmore wasn't shy about what United Commercial has accomplished there.

"Knox Street's probably the best example of an urban village in Dallas-Fort Worth," Ashmore said.

In Seattle, the Emerald City, urban village concepts are invading a lot of the new construction. More and more pedestrian friendly layouts and impediments for cars are being poured.

"These little-bitty changes lead to changes in our impact on the globe," Al Durning, a Seattle native and executive director of the nonprofit research group Northwest Environment Watch, told the Christian Science Monitor recently.

The traffic devices - intended to slow cars and invite foot travel - are part of a much larger experiment in Seattle to balance the area's continuing growth with its deeply ingrained environmental ethic.

The concept is bold: Inside cities, new policies aim to accommodate projected population increases by promoting densely inhabited, walkable urban villages.

Seattle's 20-year strategy for this kind of growth, approved in 1994, is showing signs of success, the Christian Science Monitor reports. The city's population is growing steadily, following decades of decline, and property values are rising. In King County, which includes the city of Seattle, nearly 90% of new housing units are now springing up in urban rather than rural areas. In Seattle proper, two-thirds of new housing is in the designated growth areas, or urban villages.

"Seattle is experiencing a [housing] boom right in the heart of its inner city," Kathy Becker, a program officer in growth management at the Bullitt Foundation in Seattle, told the Christian Science Monitor. "In other communities, people would be building $400,000 houses on 2.5 acres in the suburbs."

Rob Althouse is founder of Ecological Design Group in Albuquerque, N.M., which specializes in sustainable community planning and community design. He says the urban village concept is a "revolution" going on in modern community design.

"It has evolved over the last twenty years and it is deemed by many to be as important as the Bauhaus architectural movement in Europe," he said in a recent paper.

Althouse says urban villages are an alternative to sprawl.

"(You) have neighborhoods comprised of housing, parks and schools, all within walking distance of shops, civic services, jobs and transit," he said. "It is a modern version of the traditional town."

Several similar urban villages are already under construction in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, but they are parts of masterplanned communities. Post Properties of Atlanta, is plugging away at Addison Circle, a $500 million development in North Dallas under construction.

Addison Circle, when finished, is designed to accommodate about 3,000 residents, more than 280,000-square-feet of retail space and 1 million-square-feet of space.

"It's a place with a Mediterranean feel," said Robert Shaw, president of Post Properties West. "A place where someone might live above a coffee shop, work right down the street, and shop for groceries within walking distance.

"I think this is what people want when they get tired of the traffic, the impersonal stores and the cookie-cutter apartments," Shaw said. "I want to restore a sense of community."

But how does the emergence of such urban villages jibe with the explosion of new retail power centers, regional supermalls and discount outlet centers?

Quite well, actually.

"The customers of Knox Street go to NorthPark Center and Highland Park Village for certain things," Ashmore said. "Southlake Town (Square) is within five miles of Grapevine Mills mall, and we expect there will be some crossover.

"When you go to the power centers, you're looking for something specific -- it's a destinational thing," he said. "You'll come to somewhere like Southlake to have more of a sense of place, somewhere warm and personal, somewhere where you can be outdoors."

Mark Hajdu, senior vice president for the Henry S. Miller Cos. in Dallas, said the emergence of a mini-baby boom has caused consumers to spend less time and money on extravagancies and more on "simple" pleasures.

"Time becomes more valuable as things are moving quicker and quicker, so people want anything that will allow them more free time and more down time," he said. "They want a sense of community."

Published: September 25, 1998

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