Selandra Rise is a 284-acre master-planned community focused on providing diverse and affordable options for housing, employment, health, and well-being. Australia’s largest real estate developer, Stockland, partnered with the Planning Institute of Australia to create a community of 1,300 homes at buildout using sustainable building materials.
The local government, the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation, and the Growth Areas Authority partnered with Stockland to provide services to promote health, wellness, and active lifestyles. All homes are within a quarter-mile walk of parkland, including the Clyde Creek trail, small pocket parks, playgrounds, a community garden, and an outdoor fitness station. Selandra Rise developed a comprehensive network of permeable, walkable, and tree-lined sidewalks and paths. Throughout this community, wayfinding signs indicate the time it would take to walk or bike to various destinations. Bicycle lanes are separated from car traffic and walking paths lead to recreational areas. Selandra Community Place organizes twenty to thirty free programs per month focused on health, wellness and social engagement.
The master-planned community Rancho Sahuarita, located near Tucson, Arizona, and developed and owned by Sharpe & Associates, was designed with healthy living at the forefront.
The lake’s clubhouse provides residents with numerous opportunities for physical activity, including a 6,000-square-foot fitness center, dance and aerobic studios, splash park, and lap pool. The clubhouse also features an outdoor “adventure park” with tennis and basketball courts, a mini golf green, and a children’s playground. Homeowners association dues cover more than 50 different fitness classes offered in the clubhouse, including tennis, basketball, ballet, karate, and yoga.
An extensive network of recreational amenities, such as a ten-acre lake with an adjacent park and walkable promenade, encourage physical activity. The development maintains two large parks complete with pools, as well as smaller parks throughout the grounds with volleyball courts and play equipment for children. Forty miles of paved walking paths and bicycle trails, including a kid-friendly safari trail with life-size bronze animals, connect residents throughout the community.
Rancho Sahuarita has partnered with Carondelet Health Network to maintain an on-site primary and urgent care facility, as well as to offer programming that encourages physical activity and a healthy lifestyle, like a children’s summer camp and a health and wellness lecture series.
Via6 is a 654-unit mixed-use apartment complex spanning an entire city block of downtown Seattle, Washington. Developer Pine Street Group LLC and designers GGLO and Hewitt created this two-tower development as a “vertical neighborhood” of residential, leisure, and commercial spaces in an area formerly devoid of housing and street life.
The central location of Via6 ensures walkable access to a major transit hub, ground-floor retail, and carsharing services. The numerous amenities and facilities of Via6 itself aim to promote social interaction and physical activity. The ViaBike Club and the Velo Bike Shop are located on-site to provide residents and visitors with a bicycle washing station, a storage facility, lockers, showers, mechanic classes, stands, tools, and a bicycle lending service. An eighteen-foot chronograph in the lobby and two in-house event coordinators facilitate social events for residents to meet their neighbors. This LEED Gold certified building also features a green roof pavilion with indoor and outdoor gathering and barbeque spaces, rain water collection and irrigation, motion-detected lighting and climate controls, a ground-floor theater area, and a mezzanine with a fitness center, a game room, and communal lounges. Via6 remains, to date, the largest private development in Seattle’s history and has received commendation as a 2014 Urban Land Institute Global Awards of Excellence finalist, a 2014 high rise project of the year merit award from the Multi-Family Executive, and a 2013 Multi-Family Development of the Year from NAIOP Washington State.
At Mariposa, an affordable housing redevelopment project located southwest of downtown Denver and redeveloped by the Denver Housing Authority, physical activity is encouraged through thoughtful design and programming choices. Located adjacent to a new light-rail station, Mariposa encourages the use of active transportation options with a bike-sharing program and supportive classes, and the community center features an attractive, interactive internal staircase and lots of programming to get people moving.
Mueller is a 700-acre redevelopment of a former airport into a health-focused master-planned community just three miles from downtown Austin, Texas. By 2020, Mueller is projected to have over 5,700 single family and multifamily units, a quarter of which will be affordable for low-income families. The Catellus Development Corporation worked with master planners ROMA Design and McCann Adams Studio to promote community health and wellness, to increase pedestrian activity, to improve air quality, and to utilize low-emission building materials.
Mueller’s various facilities and amenities are designed around the principles of social interaction, open space preservation, and active lifestyles. Tree-lined sidewalks and protected bicycle lanes provide shade and connect to a comprehensive trail system, retail, and recreational parks to encourage walking and bicycling. To promote physical fitness, Mueller provides sports facilities, playgrounds, a stretching area, and outdoor showers. A six-acre orchard and community garden provides residents with a seasonal harvest. Residents have initiated over 40 different clubs and interest groups and over 70,000 people attend large scale community events annually. The developer has facilitated social interaction these interactions through a block party at move-in and through physical design, including front porches, stoops, gardens, and alleyways in residential areas.
In a city-state with packed landfills and a low recycling rate, the Hong Kong East Community Green Station is an attempt to rethink Hong Kong’s approach to waste. The project sits on a 0.8-acre site beneath an elevated expressway in Shau Kei Wan, a neighborhood on the east side of Hong Kong Island with a mix of residential, commercial, and industrial properties. Built with recycled and sustainable materials, the site includes recycling facilities as well as educational and community spaces that are meant to expose citizens to the importance of waste reduction.
