Role: Independent Designer;
Design Time: Spring 2005;
Site Area: 28.5 Ha.;
GFA: 265,000 sq. m.;
Professor: David Lee;
Honor & Score: The 1st Place in studio (High Pass).

The project is located in Roxbury, Boston, and it’s the neighborhoods around Dudley Square Station of Metro Silver Line, including a mixed-use regional hub, community center, residential areas and other functions. The suburbanization for years has caused urban decline, so this is a typical urban revitalization project to address this issue. Learning from New Urbanism theory, the planning concept considered living as the theme, reintegrated various elements of modern life, so as to create compact, pedestrian-friendly and mixed-use neighborhoods.

Planning Concept: Balanced Vision of Life Themes
1. Housing Maximization
-- Positives: Diversity of housing types, Mixture of racial & income groups;
-- Obstacles: Lower income than city average, High housing prices, Lower percentage of affordable housing;
-- Vision: Maximize housing, Enough affordable housing, Optional unit sizes;
2. Business Corridor
-- Positives: Rich local business types, Sound occupation structure;
-- Obstacles: Higher unemployment rate, Higher poverty rate;
-- Vision: Enhance local business, Job creation;
3. Circulation Improvement
-- Positives: Transit based city; Urban ring/Silver line/Bus lines;
-- Obstacles: Traffic congestion, Pedestrian restricted, Unsafe streets / High crime rate;
-- Vision: Street pattern modification, Add bus lines, Silver line extension, Reduce auto-use, Pedestrian friendly, Streetscape improvement, Surface parking improvement;
4. Entertainment Destination
-- Positives: Diversity of recreational places, Dynamic art related projects;
-- Obstacles: Lack of life maintenance services, Dead city after 5:00pm;
-- Vision: Enhance art activities, 18 hour community;
5. Green City
-- Positives: Rich resources of open spaces;
-- Obstacles: Contamination on certain vacant lots, Heavy traffic emission/noise, Dirty streets/buildings, Underdeveloped waste disposition;
-- Vision: Clean up: Contaminant removal, Phyto-remediation;
Sustainable development: Pollution prevention, Energy / resource conservation, Waste disposition/treatment, Recycled materials, Noise control.

In the planning, to take advantage of vacant lots and combine demolition and protection of existing buildings, the center of the entire project was the focal point where Dudley Square is located with a famous local historic preservation architecture, Ferdinand’s Building and several major roads of the city intersect, I made it a mixed-use urban commercial center with the combination of classical and modern styles and set up a 4-star hotel, office buildings, shopping stores and entertainment venues here. The northernmost intersection of Melnea Cass Blvd. and Washington St. became the gateway to enter this district from Boston downtown, and to echo downtown’s high-density setting, I set up high-rise iconic office and residential complexes here. The southernmost part in the area is the community service facilities lot, and I set up low-density community center, a primary school and other service buildings here. To emphasize the theme of Housing Maximization, I fully developed the livable lands in the area with various types of residential architecture, focused on the Bartlett Yard as a purely residential lot, considered the terrain of the site, and arranged the various suitable density of apartment, townhouse, duplex, single-family dwellings here. Thus, the entire district became the ideal homeland for local people with balanced living, self-sufficiency, revitalization, prosperous and healthy life.