... and it only took 24 years
Being a modern, globalized boomtown has left us with some big expectations about how fast cities grow and change and when they are "complete" - it's good to get excited about bold, big and fast changing places. But sprawling sustainability garbage-fire developments are bold, big and fast too. More critical to get the fundamentals right.
Every single building in Bridgeland will be around a few multiples of the time it took to redevelop the neighbourhood (e.g. Dominion might be there for 50, 75 or 100+ years). On a city timeline, having the fundamentals right - good public realm that supports true active mobility lifestyle, physical design and population density/capacity to support local services and amenities, diverse housing choices to minimize demographic bubbles - will lead to a successful neighbourhoods time and time again. Bridgeland is slowly materializing as a great mid-rise district - one of our first ones largely "complete" in the latest generation of construction. Probably only Beltline has the "mid-rise" and "complete" boxes checked so far in this city (complete = a successful built-out urban dense community, not necessarily one that doesn't build anymore).
Of course this is very frustrating as someone who only has one human life span to live, as most of what we build now will probably outlive me (and I am not very old), so few "do-overs" available if we build something dumb. Cities unfortunately have a life spans of hundreds of years, so we won't be around to see it all go spectacularly well or horribly wrong. All the more reason s to support things that are good now and get the fundamentals correct!
On that note, it feels weird to me why Bridgeland is developing literally right now - as the local and global economy crumbles, a layman like myself would guess this would be a stressful time to start big projects, let a whole swathe of ones who all happen to be primed and well positioned to all start at the same time, all within within a few blocks of each other. I am curious on what people smarter than me think about if this is a coincidence or if there is something more to it.
