Redesigning a Tacoma Neighborhood

For each of the last four years, UI senior architecture students have redesigned a neighborhood in the City of Tacoma, Washington. The primary goal is to design not just sustainable buildings but sustainable neighborhoods, pedestrian-oriented environments with connections to public transit that discourage crime and encourage positive social interaction between people who live, work, and shop in the neighborhoods.

Before designing, students examine the neighborhoods to gain an understanding of the character and integrity of the existing architecture, businesses, and transportation patterns. Students also learn through interaction with neighborhood groups, representatives from the City of Tacoma, and practicing architects and planners including alumni such as Lyn Messenger (1966), now principal at Belay Architects, and Jeremy Doty (2000), intern architect at BCRA and member of the Tacoma Planning Commission.

Impact

Working within guidelines for Mixed-Use Centers developed by the City of Tacoma, students envision what the streetscapes of Tacoma neighborhoods might look like with enhancements such as street trees, alternate paving materials, and streetcar lines. Objectives include preserving the character of the neighborhoods, maintaining and adaptively reusing historic buildings, maintaining existing single family housing and viable businesses, providing services for existing and new residents, enhancing public transportation and encouraging walking, providing a variety of new housing choices, and stimulating business development by enhancing the urban environment.

Students strive to understand, retain, and enhance the unique qualities of each neighborhood. In the long blocks of South Tacoma, for example, students proposed that an east-west pedestrian path bisect each block to enhance pedestrian connections and help knit the neighborhood together. These mid-block paths expanded to become mid-block pedestrian plazas. One student proposed a car museum along South Tacoma Way, the former Route 99, now home to classic car showrooms and the annual car show. Given plans for a commuter rail link to Seattle, another student proposed a mixed-use rail station. In the ethnically diverse Hilltop neighborhood, famous for its nightlife and shopping in the past, students proposed an art center fronting a civil rights plaza, entertainment complexes, and a mixed-use urban grocery with housing and a community courtyard.

Principal Contributors

Anne L Marshall, PhD
Professor
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Additional Contributors

Senior Architecture Student at the University of Idaho.

Architecture Arch 453 Architectural Design V
Design in the urban and/or community context. Application of urban theory and appropriate responses to climatic factors to the
resolution of architectural and planning problems in community or urban contexts. Collaborative and/or interdisciplinary design
encouraged.